Redemption
by One Wish Magic
Summary: A slightly alternate take on the events proceeding the 100 Years War. Azula was not evil, she was hurt and she was broken. But sometimes broken things can be fixed. Zuko had to believe that he could help her, because reversing the damage Ozai had done was a process which first began at home. Will feature Mai, Ty Lee and The Gaang later on.
1. Liberation

_So I initially thought this was an original idea. Took a quick browse on the sight and quickly amended my mistake :') But even the same idea written by different people is different, right? Right._

_Okay, so before I get started I need to explain a few things about this story which will have barings on how it is updated. Because I am combined honours in University, I had a choice in final year to do either a dissertation, or something called The Writing Project, which is equal to a dissertation. I chose the latter. What this bascially means is that I have free reign to produce 8,000 words on anything I like. Sounds amazing, right? Well it is and it isn't :'). I can knock 8,000 words out of the woods easily (I already have more than that written for this story) but writing 8,000 words to be accessed and graded as a substantial part of my overall degree? Forget about it. The stress is sending me Azula-level crazy :') So this story is written as a means of release (though at times it ends up being just as stressful!) a nice little angsty-but-warms-the-cockles-of-your-heart affair. It is not my best work, but also far from my worst. However, just as a warning, as I'm sure you can understand, my degree is priority and takes precedent over this, so I won't always be able to give a regular update. And I won't post anything I consider complete crap just for the purpose of an update because it's not fair on the reader. Apart from that, hope you enjoy :)_

_I do not own Avatar: The Last Airbender. I just have a lot of genuine love and pity for Zuko and Azula, because I don't think any fictional father has ever screwed his children up more than Ozai. Though I could be wrong._

_I make no profit apart from my own sanity. Which, you know, is always good._

* * *

**Chapter One**

_Liberation_

* * *

Her mutilated bangs had grown just long enough to tickle her nose. They mocked her with their interminable, feather-light touches, threatening to drive her crazier than she already was.

With a decisive hand she reached up, twisted the feathered strands into a tight coil around her finger and pulled, gratified by the sharp little starbusrts of pain that erupted across her head: the only thing which gave any meaning to the uninterrupted monotony of incarceration. She let the strands fall, one by one, through her fingers like little bits of her identity in a gradual erosion from Fire Lord Azula to … what exactly?

They became part of the debris that littered the floor around her, little bits of the mask that had been chipped away to reveal the monster, the _animal_ within. Well, if they wanted to reduce her to all fours she would show them just how well she could crawl.

With a sudden, myopic interest she examined her hand, flexing the fingers cautiously, experimentally in the sallow light of the crystals that were used to illuminate the lower levels of the asylum. Only it wasn't _her_ hand. Her hand was smooth and powerful, manicured to a deadly, pointed precision. _This_ was the hand of a peasant. One whose common labours was ground into every facet of their skin, whose nails were brittle and jagged and_ ingrained with dirt_.

Her mien slipped into a dissembling smile.

When they brought her here to this infernal dungeon they had stripped her of everything that could be viewed as a weapon. Standard protocol. For _her_ own safety, of course; as if insanity impeded her hands instead of her mind and she might bungle a strike and injure herself. Fools. High-precision manicures, however, hadn't seemed to own their appropriate place on the list of itinerary. An oversight she had quickly turned to her advantage.

In three weeks of patient, meticulous scraping she had sawn through the fibres of her straight-jacket, reducing it to nothing more than a ceremonial token of her current degradation. The scratches on her wrists – slips – standing out offensively red against her almost-translucent skin, added just the right macabre and dramatic touch, she felt.

Of course, to retain her freedom she had to prevent anyone from entering her cell and discovering what she had done. A little more screaming in the middle of the night; some dark, incessant mutterings of conspiracies and coups, and a total rejection of eye contact soon garnered her all the privacy she wanted. She was suffering a _relapse_ they told her. And the best way to curb it was through rest and quiet.

Though the downside of her plan was that her cell was now dirtier than the homes of most Earth-Kingdom peasantry, and she couldn't remember the last time clean water had come within the vicinity of her skin, never mind crossed her lips. But all of that was a small price compared to the victory she had won.

She glanced towards the litter where Ursa sat with her hands folded demurely in her lap and scowled. But even her privacy was apparently not her own these days.  
"Always so cunning, Azula," her mother's voice crooned.

"Don't try to condescend me," she snipped, "that stopped working years ago."

"Always in control," Ursa continued. "Always running from what she feels. Daddy's _perfect_ little girl."

With her liberated hands, Azula covered her ears, shaking her head vehemently. Her mutilated bangs fell across her face, obscuring her view of the litter as she repeated the Fire-Nation salute over three times. When she peeked out from behind the black strands the litter was empty once again.

With a heavy, cold weight creeping across her chest she lay down in the dirt exhausted; drawing herself into a tight, protective foetal position. She hadn't been on her feet in days, but they ached like she had walked the distance of the Fire-Nation and back. And, hour by hour, the simple task of sitting in her cell seemed to cost more and more energy that she just didn't have.

She dozed fitfully, as she always did, troubled by dreams of faces and fire and the destructive nature of both. It was later, but not that much later she knew, when she was startled awake by a sound that she almost forgot existed: the lock scraping back on the corridor which lead to her cell. Then footsteps coming down the corridor itself.

She forced herself back into a sitting position, her vision wavering a second from the effort, her whole body screaming out in protest. She carefully tucked her independent arms behind her back in a facsimile of the compliant patient. She didn't know who she expected exactly, but it wasn't who walked in.

The scar proceeded him, even now his most distinguishing feature, disfiguring the left side of his face.

Azula forced out a laugh, sinking into a servile bow.

"Well, well, well, imagine the _Fire Lord_ visiting little old _me_! I'm honoured Zu-zu. Or I would be. If you hadn't put me here in the first place."

Her crisp, tenuous voice came out like gravel from disuse. She watched him recoil. Not from the accusations she levelled at him, but from the sound. His eyes began to rake over her with a frankly intrusive intensity taking in her lank, greasy hair; the dirt smeared on her face; the prominence of her bones beneath the ghastly covering of skin; and the half-healed scabs on her wrists, the backs of her legs, the heels of her feet that split and weeped if she applied even the most transient tension to them. For the first time in months she almost felt self-conscious of her appearance.

In a sudden movement, he pressed himself up against the bars with a snarl of dissatisfaction as if he resented them for standing in his way. Azula watched him dispassionately, unimpressed by the show of masculinity. She really hoped this interview would be brief, she could feel a headache coming on that made her resistant to engaging in a badinage with her brother. She wanted to snatch a few more hours of fitful sleep before the inexorable, night-time chorus began.

"What … What happened to you?"

He asked the question with such hurt and desolation that she was forced to do a double take. No-one had used that tone to her in years: sympathetic and … gentle? Fraternal? … Parental?

Certainly no-one in here used that tone to her. Here she was addressed with clipped, condescending orders. Here her illness was something to be fixed not pitied. Treated not indulged. Needed severity not love.

Not knowing how else to react, she reacted with the sharpest tool in her arsenal: derision.

"What's the matter, Zu-zu? Troubled conscience?" She opened her arms wide to the cell around her, ignoring the lances of pain the movement sent radiating across her shoulders. "Maybe you should come and join me in here for a spell? Have a _formal_ family reunion."

She glanced furtively towards the litter where Ursa was once again sitting.

Anger flashed in Zuko's eyes and she thought she had, once again, goaded him into losing his temper. But, to her surprise he turned away from her, called towards the door:

"Guards!"

Two sets of footsteps came running with swords raised ready to apprehend anything from an escape attempt to a hostage situation. They stopped short at the sight of Ozai's children with a distance of five feet interposed between them an no signs of a skirmish, confused.

"I left specific instructions," Zuko began with a deceptive and dangerous calmness, "concerning Azula's care."

Azula began to feel the familiar, overwhelming exhaustion begin to pull on the threads of her consciousness again, distorting the voices around her. She fought against it, something deep within the core of her being telling her that a decisive moment was acting upon, them and she would need all her strength and will to seize it. She tried to focus on the figures outside her cell, but strange shadows throbbed across her vision, blurring everything but the largest, bluntest detail.

They talked irregardless of her presence. A form of rudeness insanity seemed to sanction.

"I assure you, sir, everything has been attended to with the utmost rigour." One of the guards attempted to assuage.

"Then how did she come to be in this state?" Zuko demanded.

Azula attempted a haughty expression. _State_? Well excuse her for living.

"Ah, yes …" The second guard began more hesitantly. "There has been some deterioration in her condition, sir since your last visit. A relapse. She hasn't allowed anyone inside her cell for two weeks."

Zuko's tone was back to being dangerously calm and rational again.

"Her arms are immobilised, her Fire-bending has been blocked, she has no weapons of any description, but she hasn't _allowed_ anyone inside her cell?"

He left the question hanging, at first Azula assumed in tribute to her own brilliant ingenuity – if nothing else she could always rely on Zuko to appreciate her resourcefulness. But then a horrible realization struck her: he wasn't marvelling at the fact that she hadn't been attended to in weeks, he was condemning it.

The absolute fool! If the guards came in here and discovered her handiwork she would be in a worse position than what she began in. She damned to the most carnal regions of hell the stupidity of her brother.

The guards shifted uncomfortably under the Fire-Lord's gaze, a dull _thud-thud_ of heavy boots against stone. It was against asylum policy to admit to the neglect of patients, even ones as justifiable as Azula.

At their reticence, Zuko tried a different arc.

"If her condition had deteriorated why wasn't I informed?"

Again, more uncomfortable shifting, more skirting around the truth.

"We didn't think it prudent, sir, with everything else you're required to -" The first guard began.

"- The duty of the asylum is to absolve the relative of the responsibility of care," the second guard interrupted with the old spiel. "It creates a shield for both the patient and the family."

"And just what else has been _shielded_ from me?" Zuko asked dangerously, anger flashing in his eyes like flame. "I demand to know everything that's changed concerning Azula's condition since my last visit."

The guards exchanged vindictive glances. One of the many perks of the job was getting to tell distinguished members of society some uncomfortable truths about their nearest and dearest. And they did so with a sycophantic relish.

"Your sister, sir," elucidated the second guard, "is unnameable. She is violent, volatile and aggressive. She resists any form of therapeutic influence or occupational activity, and she treats those who try to help her with open hostility, disdain and derision. Furthermore, in her psychiatrist's view, she is unlikely to ever fully recover her senses through nothing more than her own wilful obstinacy. In her cell she is disruptive and chaotic: she screams, she babbles, she holds narcissistic conversations, she ignores all sanitary conventions: she won't wash, she won't eat, and when we approach her she bares her teeth like a savage. Sir, such a level of bestiality has never been seen between these walls."

Before he knew what he was doing, Zuko had the guard up against the wall and a dagger of flame pressed against his throat. Anger, betrayal, indignation, guilt surged through him, taking his breath away. The asylum was supposed to _help _Azula, but all it had done was abuse her: denied her even the most basic right of human-to-human compassion. What had he done?

The sight of the flame caught Azula's nihilistic attention as something inextricably tied up with her identity. She lusted to hold it, feel its warmth against her skin like the touch of an old friend, but Zuko held it too far away from her. Somewhere inside the track of her interminable incarceration her own flame had been extinguished, leaving her feeling disconnected, cold and dead inside.

Zuko felt the bite of steel at the base of his neck and knew this wasn't a fight he wanted to engage. He forced himself to take a step back, conduct himself with the comportment of a Fire-Lord and not the indiscretion of a teenager. He straightened his cloak, looked through the bars at Azula, eyes full of repentance and pain.

Azula looked back at him.

"I'm taking her."

The guards were disgruntled from his assault.

"What?" The first demanded.

"I'm relieving you of your _duty of care_." Zuko elucidated in a tone that left no room for argument. "As of this moment, Azula is under my charge."

Azula looked between the three figures, distinguishable only by the colour of their robes: two white, one red. Well, if this wasn't a surprising turn of events. But then Zu-zu had always had a predilection for sensationalism. She considered the proposition carefully: while she owed no familial obligation to her brother and was not especially eager to re-visit the place of her defeat, languishing in the family home she hated seemed like an infinitely better option than languishing in the asylum cell she hated. On the balance of things then she was perfectly willing for Zuko to take her.

"I'm afraid you can't do that, sir," said the second guard sounding the opposite of apologetic, "there are protocols to be observed. Not to mention that she is not mentally stable enough to be released."

Zuko smiled, a grim slash.

"The last time I checked I was Fire-Lord, which means I can do anything I want. Open this door."

The guards had no choice but to comply. With ill grace.

"Yes sir."

Key's were produced and the cell was unlocked. Zuko rushed towards Azula, and then stopped. Hesitated. Uncertain of his next move. All the while her eyes bore into him with a cold, empty intensity that was somehow mocking even now.

Finally her held out his hands to her and said with vehement conviction:

"Come on, we're leaving."

His self-congratulatory tone grated on her. She rolled her eyes derisively.

"In case it's escaped your notice, _brother_, I'm in a straight-jacket."

Zuko grinned, raised an eyebrow.

"Really? Still?"

Hm, perhaps she would have to give him more credit in the future. With her own sly grin she produced her liberated hands to the spluttering amazement of the guards.

"She -?!"

"Impossible!"

She began to reach out, but then retracted her hands indignantly, looking at her brother with haughty and affronted independence.

"I _can_ walk."

Zuko at least allowed her the dignity of her lie.

"I know, I'm just helping you up." His optimism finally failed against the overwhelming evidence of her condition. "Your feet look sore," he admitted, concerned.

She ignored his sympathy, pain was her reality, the only thing which gave meaning to her imprisonment. She glanced towards the litter where Ursa now sat in a travelling cloak watching them.

"And I suppose this means you're coming to?" she asked.

"I go wherever my daughter goes."

"Of course you do."

Zuko looked between his sister and the empty bed, swallowing down a cold, creeping sensation. When Azula finally placed her hands in his, an implicit statement of trust, the grip was weak and frail. He could feel every bone underneath the thin covering of her skin.

He lifted her as gently as he could manage to her feet where she stood rigid and shaking with a tight grimace of pain on her face. He had never viewed Azula as being in need of protection. That conviction now faded in an instant. As she instinctively leaned against him, panting from the agony and exhaustion of simply standing on her feet, he knew it was his duty, now, to look after her, to undo the damaged their rhadamanthine father had done. If he could.

With deft fingers he undid the buckles and tossed the ruined straight-jacket to the ground.

* * *

_Thank you very much for reading :)_

_If you have time or inclination please feel free to tell me what you think, or any questions you have. Please also feel free to leave any suggestions if there is something you would like to see. Readers, afterall, are the best writers of fiction._


	2. Journey Into Freedom

I have a theoretical system. I've got four and a bit chapters written, and I'm going to try and maintain a two chapter head start, so then if everything goes south - as I anticipate it doing at some point in the year - you can still have two more chapters. Assuming anybody's actually interested :') Mainly just a filler chapter, but hey she actually has to get FROM the asylum to the palace, and there are some merits in it (I hope).

On another note my Writing Project is going. I have around 4,700 words so far (yay half way). Not that they're necessarily any good at the moment, but it takes off some of the stress. I also met with my supervisor, who gave me some good advice and, importantly, didn't express any concerns with what I was trying to do. Anyway, hope everyone's well and enjoy? chapter two.

I can't remember whether I disclaimed or not. But incase I didn't: I do not own Avatar: The Last Airbender, nor make no profit from this story.

* * *

**Chapter Two  
**  
_Journey Into Freedom._

* * *

Every step she took sent a white-hot lance of pain shooting from the soles of her feet to the crown of her head. Caused the thick, half-healed scabs to split into yawning welts on the back of her legs.

But she walked.

Up on the balls of her feet like some burlesque approximation of a dancer, and leaning heavily, dependently on Zuko's shoulder. She walked with as much dignity as she could muster under the baleful gaze of the two guards who conducted them to the main gate.

The steady weight of Zuko's arm around her waist was both a welcome and demeaning pressure. It reinforced her degradation, just how far she had slipped from perfect. And yet at the same time she knew she would fall without it.

She would not stumble for the satisfaction of these two low-lives, who had shamed and goaded her, therefore, let Zu-zu have his moment as the golden hero. She could bide her time. She was good at that.

Her vision swam dangerously, fading to black around the edges, and she licked at her dry, cracked lips tasting blood and dirt around her grimace. A tremor began at the base of her spine and radiated out to consume her. Suddenly starvation didn't feel so much like a victory.

"Just a little further," Zuko half reassured, half pleaded.

In the bilious light of the luminescent crystals he could see her failing: stuttering like a half-starved flame. The grim fight which had sustained her inside the walls of her cell, faded into smoke outside them, revealing her as what she had never been: a confused and vulnerable fourteen-year old girl.

Though she could barely walk he urged her on faster, conscious of the fact that, as long as they were inside the asylum walls, they were in danger of being separated. 'Fire Lord' only carried so much weight outside the capital, and he was already aware of having pushed the title to its absolute limit. If it came to a fight he knew he would lose it trying to protect her. And he hadn't come this far for failure.

"Just a little bit further," he repeated. Because he couldn't think of anything else to say.

The asylum was built into the side of a dormant volcano which had split from the mainland to form an island. Carved from living stone, the various corridors formed a labyrinth whose calculated uniformity inspired an insipid panic in anyone trying to escape the compound. With ten steps or ten thousand nothing varied and nothing changed. At five metre intervals locked doors lead to isolated cells, whose inmate's screams were smothered by the rock. It was a place _conducive_ to madness.

Zuko tightened his protective hold on Azula, who took in nothing of her environment. For those used to living in darkness all darkness looked the same.

The only indication that they had finally reached the higher levels came in the sudden graduation from crystals to natural light: which filtered in through small translucent windows.

Azula shied away from the daylight as if it physically burned. A hand snaked up into her lank, greasy hair, twisting and ripping out the strands with renewed agitation.

The first guard called ahead to the door:

"Open 'er up!" Then, with a sneer curling his lip, "By the Fire-Lord Zuko's command."

The two guards laughed.

Zuko ignored their derision. He shed his cloak and began to wrap it around Azula's hunched shoulders. She pushed the garment away with indignity, if nothing else always having strength for pride.

"What are you doing?" She demanded.

"The sun'll be painful on your eyes and on your skin," he told her, wrapping the cloak around her with more insistence. "This'll protect you."

With slow, hesitant movements he reached behind her and pulled up the hood, all the while marking the suspicion in her eyes which charged him with some treacherous ulterior motive.

The first and hardest thing they would have to learn was how to trust each other. Or, more precisely, how to _react_ to each other.

The rich material of the cloak felt as coarse as burlap sacking against Azula's hypersensitive skin, and the scrape of the fibres was the only thing she could concentrate on as Zuko conducted her through the gates and into a small rowing boat. It was not the triumphant liberation she had envisioned, if she had envisioned anything.

Her first breath of free air choked her. The sunlight after living – two? three months? – in the dark, sent a lance of pain so severe through her head she thought it would split in two, and the continual bobbing motion of the sea set her feeling instantly sick to her stomach. But the very worst part was that, in the absence of the enclosing walls of the asylum, she suddenly cold and paralysed with fear as she began to appreciate just how much she had depended on them for security. Now the only thing which stood between her and the outside world was Zuko.

She glanced at her brother doubtfully, recovering a little of her meagre strength now that she was able to sit back down. All things considered, she didn't fancy her chances.

She _supposed_ she should have been grateful. But then gratitude implied that she had needed his help, which of course wasn't true. She had had everything perfectly under control. And rather than saving her from the abuses of a virulent system, in reality all Zuko had done was interrupt an interesting tactical game of pai-sho. Well, it didn't matter now.

She dipped her fingers into the cold water, shivering at the delightful sensation. On a whim she submerged her hand further, allowing the water to lap against her injured wrist, sending a glorious wave of relief through her body. She longed to bathe her calves and feet as well, but knew her stomach would never permit the shift in her centre of gravity. She pulled the hood down further over her eyes, both to block out the glare of the sun and Zuko's sympathetic concern. His vigilance was grating.

As they reached the middle of the water Zuko relaxed their pace, allowing the oars to rest idle for a moment as the motion of the waves continued to propel them gently forward.

"So," she began in a facsimile of her old, supercilious tone, "not content to see me imprisoned in stone you're going to imprison me in opulence instead?"

"No," he answered with forced calm, knowing exactly what she was trying to do. She felt threatened so she attacked. Text-book Azula. "I'm taking you home."

"_Home_," she scoffed. "And I'll bet everyone in the palace is simply _dying_ to have _me_ back." Sharply: "You reinstated them I suppose?"

Treacherous mutineers that they were! But then everyone had always wanted Zuko to be Fire-Lord. And clearly he felt secure enough in their nation's loyalty to risk travelling this far without an entourage. But then there was always the counterargument that her brother was just stupid. Her personal favourite, after all.

With her disorganized thoughts wandering, and nausea overwhelming her until it was impossible to concentrate, it was a moment before she realized that he hadn't answered her question. She glanced up at him shrewdly, observing the same contrite expression she had marked at various points throughout their childhood.

"Ooooooh," she crooned deliciously, "they don't know. How impulsive of you Zu-zu. I hope you don't make all of your executive decisions in this way."

Despite his best efforts she had goaded him.

"Do you always have to be so condescending?"

"Yes," she answered simply, "It's part of who I am."

"But I don't think it is," he disagreed, "I think you use it as a way to protect yourself, because you're terrified of letting anybody get close to you."

She raised a dispassionate eyebrow.

"That's the problem with insanity. People think it gives them an unimpeded right to analyse you."

Zuko ground out a huff of frustration and began rowing again. The sudden lurch had Azula clutching her delicate stomach and hovering over the bow, swallowing convulsively. Agni, she begged, let this nausea abate, because she wasn't about to show weakness now. She cast around for something, _anything_ to distract her from the impending reality of her loss of control. She landed on the friends who had betrayed her.

"Will Mai and Ty Lee be there?" She asked around gulping swallows.

"Mai will," Zuko answered slowly, evenly, but with just the appropriate amount of tonal defensiveness. "Ty Lee checks in every other week. She's with the Kyoshi Warriors now."

Azula stored that little revelational titbit away for later analysis. So there were traitors in the Fire-Lord's house. _In her own home. _Interesting. But the question she most wanted to ask was the one she posed to him second, as if it were of no concern:

"Will," she gagged, "Will I be able to see them?"

"That's really up to Mai and Ty Lee."

Suddenly Zuko seemed to notice her predicament.

"Are you - ?"

But before she could even begin to bite out that she was _fine,_ she promptly vomited a stream of bile into the water, momentarily staining its cerulean blue with the colour of rust.

Zuko immediately shot out a hand to steady her, ignoring the glare she levelled at him even as she continued to heave and bring up nothing. He distantly remembered something about Azula's intolerance to light sea vessels – a quirk which, somehow, did not extend to warships – and he hoped that it was only the motion of the water alone which had made her ill, and not something more insidious. A vain hope considering the conditions she had been kept in.

The truth was there was nothing in her stomach, in her entire _body _to purge, except perhaps her organs, and she was even willing to forego them right now, because vomiting _anything_ was better than vomiting nothing at all. She gasped for breath, feeling her vision contract to a narrow tunnel and her head throb under a pressure that would surely make it implode. Finally, when she felt like she couldn't bare it a second longer, the retching stopped.

She slumped down exhausted over the side of the boat, the ends of her hair trailing in the water. She didn't even have the energy to wipe the humiliating tears from her cheeks.

Was there a fine line between what a body could come back from and what it couldn't? And did people know when they crossed it? Could mere months really do that much damage?

"Done?" Zuko asked gently.

She hated his compassion, his _concern_. She hated that he was trying to help her when he should have been condemning her. And most of all, she hated that he had been witness to her moment of complete and total discomposure. It was unforgivable.

She angrily pushed his hand away from her. She didn't want his pity. Pity was practised by and for the weak. She was _not_ weak.

Undeterred by her hostility, Zuko reached for his water-skin, uncapped it and offered it to her, making sure she understood that his words were an imperative and not a request.

"You need to drink."

Though her throat ached for the cold splash of liquid, she did not take it.

"_Azula_," he insisted, more than a little desperately, pressing the water-skin towards her.

She turned away from him, burying her face in the crook of her arm. If he was taking over her _duty of care_ as he put it, then let him figure it out. She was done pandering the to the will of others.

He did figure it. Eventually.

"Azula," he urged, "it's not poisoned. Look."

He waited until her eyes met his and then took a long draught from the skin, swallowing. "It's just water. I filled it myself."

That didn't rule out the possibility of slow-acting poisons. She had seen them used in the Earth Kingdom. And if the Dai Li had got word of Zuko's intentions to free her …!

But Zuko _hadn't_ intended to free her. He had done it on a whim.

"You're dehydrated, you need water," he begged. Then in a firmer tone: "You need to start helping yourself, otherwise _I_ can't help you. So please, for Agni sake, just _drink_."

A slow shiver ran through her as another layer of her identity fractured and peeled away, leaving her even further removed from herself. Under the burning gaze of the sun she began to realize that while she had spent her whole life fighting, she had never really known what she was fighting for.

Because her honour depended on it?

No, that was Zuko's reason. she didn't have any shame to atone.

Because she had been indoctrinated?

No, she had chosen war and destruction of her own free will.

Because politics and depravity had combined to force her up against a wall?

Maybe.

She had always assumed that she could read people. Recent events had taught her she was wrong. In that moment then she resolved to be selfish, to fight for _herself._ Because as far as she could see it, no-one else deserved her loyalty.

Against her better judgement, she took the water-skin with trembling hands and spilled the liquid past her lips. One intemperate swallow was all it took to awaken a burning and frenzied thirst for the first time in days.

She began to gulp the liquid, desperate to get as much of it into her body as she could before it was taken away. Zuko's hand gently caught her wrist and eased the water-skin away from her lips with an apologetic smile.

"Not so fast. Take a drink, count to twenty, take another. Trust me."

She did.

Tentatively.

Somewhere in the midst of counting and sipping, the washing motion of the water became the rocking of a carriage, the liquid whisper gave way to the grind of stone.

Azula woke sometime later, frightened and disorientated by the involuntary lapse of time. From where she lay, stretched out across one of the benches, she could just make out the sky through the carriage's veiled windows. Barely succeeding its three o'clock arch when they had left the asylum, it now bled with the reds and oranges of an angry, violent sunset. A omen of her homecoming if ever there was one.

She glanced at the bench opposite her, propped up on one shaking elbow in the best approximation of a defensive stance she could assume without actually standing. She didn't know what she might have betrayed, what she might have screamed to the darkness while she had no control.

Zuko reached out towards her with a slow, placating gesture though, she noted, he no longer presumed the right to physical contact. An irritatingly benign smile stretched the scar on his face.

"You've been asleep," he explained with a penchant for stating the obvious. "We're about half an hour out from the palace. I've sent a messenger hawk ahead."

She ground out something unintelligible and lay back down, still feeling Zuko's cloak around her. With an ambivalent sense of bitterness and pride she noted that a messenger hawk would not have been necessary if Zuko had been returning alone, as planned. She wondered what wild rumours were circulating ahead of their arrival. What plots were being formed to be carried out with all haste _now_ while she was still out of commission from the asylum.

She ignored Zuko's anxious gaze as it bore into her, drawing her knees up to her chest in a reassuring foetal position. It was this movement which alerted her to a foreign touch and pressure against her calves. She glanced down finding that her legs had been loosely and unevenly wrapped in thin strips of material which, at their most generous and optimistic approximation, could pass for a crude attempt at bandaging.

To her surprise, Zuko chuckled. A light and open sound she had never heard before.

"Sorry, I'm not much of a healer."

"Clearly."

Though she had to admit – not to him, of course – that he legs did feel slightly easier in their incompetent bindings. And the fact that he had done it stirred … _something_ uncomfortably in her chest. She pushed it aside.

"Do you want some more water?" He asked, uncapping the skin.

As she went to answer him, however, whatever it was that had stirred in her chest erupted from her throat in a paroxysm of deep, rattling coughs. Dispelling Zuko's ever-fading hope that she had come through her neglect lightly.

He converged on her, hands hovering uncertainly, _helplessly_ above her convulsing body. When she finally recovered her breath, he pushed the water-skin towards her in earnest. She took the smallest, most imperceptible swallow before handing it back to him.

"Just a cough," she dismissed dispassionately at his concern.

"Uncle would be making you drink double helpings of ginseng tea if he heard that cough."

"I don't like ginseng tea," she answered, as if this resolved the issue.

Her eyes wavered and slipped closed for a second. He waited until they opened again before he reached towards her with the back of his hand and laid it upon her forehead. As a general rule Fire-benders did not get sick, but given everything she had been exposed to he was willing to bet that – as with every other rule – she was the exception.

He felt no evidence of fever. Yet. But what he _did_ feel scared him more than if he had.

A Fire-bender's internal fire was as physical as muscle and sinew. It could be felt at all times as a subcutaneous warmth _beneath_ the dermis of the skin: as liquid as blood, as solid as bone. Azula's skin was cold. A cold that penetrated to her core. A cold that felt like the cold of death itself.

He recoiled before he could stop himself.

She looked at him with guilty, desolate eyes like a child found harbouring a virulent secret.

"What happened?" He ground out in horror.

Her voice was small and timid when she answered.

"I lost it."

"When? _How_?"

" … I don't remember."

She couldn't bare his gaze any longer. She turned away from him and buried her face into the grooves of the cushions. The vehicle that was chaffering her triumphant return wasn't even the _royal_ carriage. The seats smelt like peasantry, and further emphasized her fall.

After a few moments Zuko backed up and resumed his own seat across the carriage.

How could someone like Azula lose her bending? But not just _lose _it, feel it grow sick and die within her? Fire was the quintessential essence of who she was: powerful, fierce, intransigent. What was it like then to feel hollow and cold in a place where all that power used to burn? He couldn't imagine.

Had they done something to her in the asylum? He couldn't rule out that possibility, though the thought made him feel sick. Or was this the culmination of all her transgressions, which had amounted to disarm her of her most dangerous and nefarious weapon? He couldn't rule out that possibility either. The ability to bend was born of the body and, like the body, could only suffer so much abuse before it breaks. Either way this was above and beyond his ability to resolve. He needed to talk to uncle.

Uncle would know what to do.

That conviction was followed on the heels by a creeping and mordant doubt. But would his uncle help him? Would _anyone_ help him in reference to Azula? And did he have a right to _expect_ them to? She had been mendacious and cruel, the best traits of their father superimposed on an impressionable child, who had learned to substitute perfection for love, because it was easier for her to make people fear her than like her.

No, he decided, he could not expect anyone to help him. Azula was his burden. He had taken it upon himself to free her. He had shown kindness, or weakness and only time would tell whether either one would come back to haunt him. Only time would tell whether his decision would define him or damn him.

With all the best intentions in the world, he knew taking her back to the palace was simply trading one hostile environment for another, and that she was in just as much danger there as in the asylum. Maybe more. _Madness_ was dangerous, and frightening and violent (or so everybody assumed). But more than that it was vulnerable, because it contravened a natural human right to equanimity. It made _Azula_ vulnerable. Possibly for the first time in her life.

He looked at the exhumed figure, buried beneath the swathes of a cloak which should have all but fitted her. Listened to her quick, erratic breaths, peppered by suppressed moans which spoke of a troubled and restless sleep. He buried his head in his hands, a painful throbbing burrowing into his chest, infected with grief and guilt that he had let it come to this.

The true destruction of Ozai was not in the lands and villages. It was in his own home.

And Zuko had to believed there was some way he could help her help herself. Had to believe that there was still some good left in the people that he loved – or else, what was the point?

The carriage drew into an empty court-yard and no-one met them at the palace, for which Azula was grateful. The familiar sight of her family home brought her little relief. Pulses of blue and amber danced before her eyes like a dumb show, and the sensation of water rising up around her clenched her throat until it was almost impossible to breath. This was the last place she wanted to be, and the only place she had to go.

Pathetic.

"Are you ready?" Zuko asked, offering her his hand.

At the slightest provocation her legs and feet erupted with pain, threatening to collapse underneath her, and making it all that she could do not to cry out in agony. She gritted her teeth and urged herself forward. Pain had kept her alive for the past three months in the asylum, it wasn't going to defeat her now. She owned it.

With slow, shuffling steps, and Zuko's arm again supporting her weight, they inched through the cold, deserted corridors that, in the darkness, looked no different from the ones in the asylum. It was a bitter taste of freedom.

They did not speak. There was nothing left to say.

Azula pulled the hood down further across her face. She didn't look up again until they stopped.

"This isn't my room," she told him apathetically, appraising the overly-formal furnishings and large ornate mirror with distaste. Surely Zuko could not be so flagrantly incompetent?

"I know it isn't," he answered evenly, guiding her towards the large, four-poster bed.

In the mirror as she passed she caught a flash of Ursa's smile.

"I thought there might be more memories than you were comfortable with there." Almost as an afterthought he added: "I sleep across the hall."

So that was it then. He wanted her somewhere where he could watch her. Play the concerned and condoning relative. At least in the asylum she had had a right to privacy, even if certain figures hadn't always respected it.

Zuko sighed, a compromise. The first of many he would be making.

"If you really want to sleep in your old room I'll have someone make it up for you tomorrow. That's the best I can do."

She took another dispassionate glance around the chamber. Maybe Zuko had a point. And he had been the coward and moved first, after all. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to have someone within calling distance to defend her from the attacks she was anticipating. Just while she was recovering, of course. It was basic strategy. Nothing more.

"No, it doesn't matter."

Using the bed-post for support, she shook off his arm before crawling under the covers. She had almost forgotten what it felt like to sleep in a bed, to sleep on any surface that wasn't a cold, stone floor.

"Goodnight, Zu-zu."

Her words were not a expression of sentiment, they were a dismissal, designed to remind him that she still commanded the authority in any room she occupied.

Before he left Zuko untied the water-skin from his belt and placed it on the bed-side table, knowing that it was the only thing she knew was safe to drink.

She was asleep before he reached the doorway. He lingered for a moment watching her, knowing that the peace he observed now would not last. Soon the screams and nightmares would begin.

"Goodnight," he whispered only partially shutting the door behind him.

How could so much change within the space of a day?

* * *

Thank you for reading :)

Please feel free to leave a review. Questions. Criticisms. Anything you would like to see. Let me know what you think.


	3. Expectations and Dissapointment

_Frirst of all just let me take the oppertunity to say thank you to everyone who favorited/subscribed (and of course reviewed) this story. I'm glad you're enjoying it. Now all I have to do is NOT let you down. Haha, no pressure. Bit of a long chapter here which will probably be my only update this month as Christmas deadlines are begining to pile up and look very intimidating for uni :l Joy. Things are still flowing along in pretty smooth water so far though (how long that lasts I do not know. People seem to have a lot of horror storys about 3rd year). This story provides a nice stress-relief where I don't have to word-count and I can afford to be -slightly- less rigourous in my work. Just as a sidenote, my updates will usually tend to be of a wednesday, I have a long day in uni Thursdays and what can I say: a few emails make getting up at 5am a little more barable._

_In this and the following chapters I veer away from solely Azula's point of view for, although it is her redemption, other people are involved in it to different effects and I thought it would be interesting to get inside thier perspectives and stroll around. That being said, and for some unknnown reason, I always struggle with writing Zuko because I never feel like I've got his voice quite right. But hopefully I've done him justice.  
_  
_Still don't own Avatar._

* * *

**Chapter Three**

_Expectations and Disappointment_

* * *

_Her body radiated tension in his arms; the wrinkle at the bridge of her nose betraying that her anger was undercut by conflict and confusion. He pressed his lips to her forehead, willing her to understand, whispering the words against her skin:_

"_Mai … I had to."_

_She was silent. The ghosts of prison memories telling as shadows on her face. He hated himself for hurting her this way. For asking her to _acceptthis_, when her whole defection from Azula had been for _him_._

_Finally she sighed. An unwilling compromise._

"_That doesn't mean I like it." She countered sharply,"Or that I don't think you're making a mistake. But I understand." Then, after a moment, she hedged: "Do you really think she can change?"_

"_I have to give her the opportunity to try. The same opportunity that was given to me." _

_Mai bit her lip before saying with hard sympathy: _

"_You do know that she can never be anything less than what she is, don't you? She'll always be Azula; manipulating, controlling, cold. That'll never change, no matter what happens to her." She touched her long, slender fingers to the tight skin of his scar. "I know I sound harsh, but I just don't want to see you disappointed by something she can never be. She's not like you, Zuko."_

"_I know who she is," he admitted heavily._

"_Then you need to be clear on what it is you want from her. For all of our sakes."_

Their conversation from the previous night ran on a loop in Zuko's mind, forcing him to confront some harsh, uncharitable truths.

Mai was right, naturally. Now that Azula was home, he needed to be clear on what it was he was trying to work towards with her. And what was realistically achievable. Ultimately he was trying to re-build a relationship with his sister; trying to find some sort of even ground they could occupy where, theoretically, they might begin to move towards understanding each other. How realistic that was would remain to be seen.

But in the same way that Mai was right she was also wrong, because Azula already _was_ something less than herself. Both in body and mind the lightening princess had been stripped back to an earlier framework – one that still malleable, still _amenable. _One that maybe – just maybe – kindness and love might be able to affect, and absolve some of the damage Ozai had done. He had heard insanity called the second childhood. Well, if anyone ever deserved another shot …

Mai had also refused to have anything to do with her former friend. An aversion Zuko had, in turn, accepted and understood, even if it interposed a distance between them.

He spared a side-long glance towards the bed where Azula sat propped up by pillows, enduring the young healer's ministrations with ill grace. She clutched a crimson blanket tightly around her shoulders, helping to conceal just how loosely her clothes hung off her ravaged frame. Unfortunately the bold hue also did her the back-hand injustice of emphasizing the virgin pallor of her skin.

Earlier that morning a few trusted and grudgingly-willing chambermaids had been tasked with washing away all traces of the asylum from her: much to Azula's acrimony and apprehension. One of the maids had sympathetically – foolishly – attempted to tie the mutilated bangs back of the princess' face after witnessing her tear at them with vicious agitation. She had been treated to a scathing tirade for her trouble, reminding Zuko that Azula's words had the capacity to burn at least as hot as her flame. And that she was not entirely without weapons.

His sister did not appreciate help. Not in any shape or form, which she amounted to pity.

It was the barricade preventing them from moving forward.

But in the absence of the dirt, which she had worn like a mask, like a mark of _honour_ in her degradation, she looked vulnerable and fragile; lost and confused. And Zuko _did_ pity her. Because he saw himself reflected back from her eyes: the angry, obsessed, unstable version of three years previous.

Mai said Azula was not like him. But what if they were more alike than either of them thought?

And if they _were_, did that mean she too could be saved?

"Ow."

It was a tempestuous accusation but, more than that, it was an _admission_ of pain. All the more pitiable because she couldn't bite it back, even though she was trying.

"I'm sorry princess," the young healer begged tremulously-earnest, stealing a wary glance at the Fire-Lord who stood a few paces away. "I promise I'm being as gentle as I can."

She dipped another cotton ball into the opalescent solution before continuing to dab at the wounds on Azula's calves, eliciting another sharp, disdainful hiss.

If looks could kill, thought Zuko dryly.

Azula's catalogue of abuses, compiled that morning, was daunting. On the one hand there were the extreme effects of malnutrition and dehydration to contend with, which had culminated in a loss of somewhere between 45-47% of her original bodyweight. Counter-balancing that in severity were the pressure sores on the backs of her legs, the heels of her feet which, at the most optimistic assessment, would take months to even begin to heal – the Aloe and Silver solution was being used to draw out the infection. Then, occupying an ominous grey area on the spectrum, was the heavy rattling in her chest, becoming more pronounced by the hour; the thick, barking coughs which quite literally took her breath away. And those were just the _physical_ manifestations of her treatment. What abuses had been heaped on her already fragile mind Zuko couldn't even begin to imagine.

The though of what she must have suffered turned Zuko's stomach, though he didn't know whether it was with anger or grief, because the question wasn't even who could do this to _Azula_. It was who could do this to _another human being_.

Azula turned half-bleary eyes upon her brother. Punctuated them with a malicious smile.

"Enjoying the show?" she rasped.

"Not particularly," Zuko admitted evenly. "I don't enjoy seeing you in pain."

"Pity. And here I thought sadism was a _family_ trait."

She tried to laugh but the bitterness caught in her throat, launched her into another paroxysm of deep, wrecking coughs which shook her entire frame.

Zuko surged forward, bracing one hand against her shoulder to prevent her from collapsing in on herself, pounding firmly on her back with the other. The coughing frightened him every time, but he had quickly become adept at managing it. He listened, waited – prayed – for the slight hesitation in her breath which would signal that the fit was coming to an end, all the while cringing at how painful it sounded.

"It's okay," he soothed uselessly, and probably to her indignation. "It's okay."

As he held her he became aware of the distinctive heat of her skin, which had not been there even an hour previous. With her bending compromised, the elevated temperature could only be a result of fever. Another worrying symptom to add to the list.

He swore under his breath.

He hadn't expected her to recover straight away, that would have been miraculous. But he also hadn't expected her to deteriorate either. Yet that was arguably what had happened.

The resources available to him at the palace were pitiable, healing had evidently not been one of Ozai's priorities in his egocentric power-trip to The Phoenix King, and he himself had not got round to rectifying the oversight yet. Furthermore, the _knowledge_ of healing itself had been significantly diluted during Ozai's reign, making tea the panacea for everything from colds to haemorrhages. Therefore, if Azula's condition was going to continue to deteriorate he would need to bring in outside help. He would need _Katara_. And how his sister would react that he could only imagine.

Maybe it was a blessing in disguise she couldn't Fire-bend.

The fit lasted longer than any which preceded it, leaving her spent and exhausted. She slumped with her whole weight against the support of Zuko's hand, until he could feel the too-fast beat of her heart within its fragile case. Her eyes were veiled, half-closed as she drew weak, shallow breaths that sent a shiver of fear down his spine.

He had never doubted that Azula could survive anything. Not even at the Western Air Temple. She was wilful, obstinate and had a penchant for always landing on her feet. Beyond that she was _born lucky_.

But something about this fight was different. It had her down before she could even throw a punch.

"I'll make her some ginseng tea," the healer promised as the fit ended.

Zuko shook his head, pushing Azula's bangs back off her face anxiously.

"She wont be able to keep it down. She can't keep anything down but water. I've tried."

The first thing he had done: source something for her to eat, using his own experiences of starvation after the Fire-Nation's defeat at the South Pole to guide the transition. His efforts were in vain, however, as it quickly became apparent that anything she tried to put into her body would be efficiently and painfully rejected. They had gave up trying after the third attempt.

" … Then maybe some incense?" The young healer mused uncertainly. "To help open up her airway?"

She looked at the Fire-Lord with grave solemnity.

"She really needs to be eating something. Water alone isn't going to be enough."

"Don't you think I know that!" Zuko snapped.

Why did everyone make Azula's condition sound like a self-inflicted choice?

But even as he silently fumed he remembered her refusal to take the water-skin until he could prove that it hadn't been tampered with. Was it possible then she had purposely made herself sick for the same reason? Because she couldn't prove, beyond all doubt, that the food her brother brought her was safe? Because she didn't trust that he was capable of protecting her from the people, real or imagined, who might want to hurt her?

_Was_ there an element of masochism in her suffering because, on some nihilistic level, Azula believed that she deserved to be punished?

Or was she, even now, playing him like a well-sounded instrument? Who could tell.

Zuko dropped his head into his hands, ashamed of his conduct to a girl who had done nothing but help them.

"I'm sorry, Zhara. I shouldn't have snapped at you."

Zhara offered him an understanding smile, beginning to bandage Azula's calves with deft, gentle movements while the princess was compliant.

"I'll see if I can find something to help settle the nausea. In the meantime, try mixing a little honey with the water you give her. It'll provide some of the calories and sugars she needs, and she should be able to tolerate it."

Azula's body might tolerate it but that, he was quickly learning, was only one fifth of the battle. Nevertheless, he returned her smile and thanked her for the advice.

In the intervening time, Azula had recovered sufficiently to view his supporting hand with disdain. She pushed him away, as if affection was another form of poison which might infiltrate her body if she let her guard down.

"Get off me," she mumbled.

He removed his hand slowly, easing her back against the pillows.

Her reproach towards everything he was trying to do for her stung. But, in all honesty, what had he expected. _Gratitude_? This was Azula after all. Through her eyes, bringing her home from the asylum was not an act of compassion, it was the culmination of a guilty conscience. As she rightly pointed out, he had put her there in the first place. Which meant he was to blame for everything that had happened.

"Don't you have somewhere to be?" She demanded acidly. "Some meetings to attend? Some peasants," she shifted her position slightly and winced, "to bore with didactic speeches?"

That was the final straw. Something within him broke.

He knew she was callous because she felt vulnerable and vulnerability scared her. But he was too angry to be rational. Even a coastal shelf could only take so much wearing from the sea before it crumbled, and he had reached his limit.

If she wanted him to leave he would go. He would leave her to her misery alone.

"Actually," he answered coldly, "I do. If you'll excuse me."

He drew back from her bed to a sudden look of alarm.

What, he almost laughed, had she assumed her order to leave was ambivalent?

Or had she just never really expected him to go?

He kept walking.

She had to learn. He didn't want to leave her but she _had_ to learn. Not everyone would be as sympathetic to her pride as he was; not everyone would give her the benefit of the doubt as he did, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. She had to learn that her actions had consequences. That hostility was a barrier people only worked to break through for so long.

" - Zu?"

The call was timid, childish: unlike any tone he had heard her use in years. And he wasn't falling for it. Not this time. He would never let her manipulate him again.

He heard her struggle against Zhara's attentions. Heard the healer protest:

"Princess, please - ! You cannot walk."

"Let go of me!" she raged. " Zuko? Zuko!"

He turned back to her. Restrained by Zhara's hands there was something akin to anger, something akin to fear in her face. Her lips formed silent words in whose bulk he detected his name, and a term he had never heard her use with any sincerity: 'please.'

But both sounded like lies and manipulation to his ears. They had been here before.

When he spoke it was with a foreign and cruel coldness that he didn't know existed inside him:

"If she doesn't want to be helped, Zhara then leave her. The pain of her injuries will teach her to curb her pride soon enough."

He saw it in her eyes like a flash of lightening: white-hot and devastating. Betrayal.

She stopped fighting, cowed to Zhara's restraint.

And he knew he'd made a mistake.

In two sentences, which could have easily been spoken by his father, he had just decimated every small step they had made, every minute progress they had taken towards re-learning how to be a family.

Horrified and frightened by himself, he fled the room.

Out in the corridor, and with the return of reason, he brought his fist into contact with the wall.

What had he _done_?!

He heard Zhara attempting to console her. _Console her_ because _he_ had lied! Because he had lead her to place her faith in him, and then he had let her down. Just like everyone else in her life.

He slid down the wall and buried his head in his hands, gripping at his hair.

Like a nagging ache, Mai's question circulated in his mind again.

What did he want from Azula?

He wanted her to be the sister he had lost at four years old when she had discovered he talent for Fire-bending, and they had been divided. He wanted her to forgive him for ever putting her into the hands of abuse, because he could not forgive himself, and the guilt was slowly killing him.

* * *

_(Several hours later)_

"A-zu-la ..."

The call cracked like a whip in the stillness, full of power and malevolence.

Her voice was playful, crooning, but with an insidious edge. She separated the name into three drawn-out syllables, the same way a child might in lisping a sing-song taunt.

Azual's heart stuttered in her chest. _No. Not again._

She opened her eyes fearfully and searched for the passively threatening figure of her mother.

Some time in the intervening hours of pain and misery it had grown dark, and no-one had been to either light her a candle or to drawn the curtains – probably at Zuko's spiteful request. The sickly moonlight poured into her chamber, throwing virulent shadows up against the walls. But her mother was no-where to be seen.

A shiver crept along the length of her spine.

She knew Ursa would come. She had made her tenacity perfectly clear, so why was Azula afraid? The simple and confounding answer was instinct. She understood that something had changed.

She sat listening until she was deafened by the silence, but heard nothing. Warily she lay back down and closed her eyes; hesitating just on the cusp of sleep when her mother's voice run out again.

"A-zu-la ..."

_Please._

"I'm tired," she whispered into the bedsheets, hoping to sway Ursa's sympathy in a way she never could as a child. She just wanted to sleep. She wanted her mother to _leave_. To fade into the night like she had done all those years ago.

"Why are you crying, Azula?" Sung Ursa with concern.

"I'm not crying. I said I was _tired_."

The sound of a child's wail suddenly filled her ears; desperate and fearful. The sound of _her_ crying she realized with a sickening lurch: from a long, long time ago.

She screwed her eyes tighter, balled her hands into fists. It wasn't real. It wasn't real. Except it _was_.

It was a memory.

She waited for the sound of running footsteps she knew would come – panicked by her earnest tone. She was three years old and frightened by the dark, calling for her mother in the night.

She felt the brush of Ursa's robes against her own skin as the child was taken into arms. Heard her mother's voice beg with the last residue of maternal affection:

"Azula? Azula! What's frightened you, my darling?"

Then silence.

She let out a strangled sob around the fist in her mouth. _Not again. Please._

But no fear had ever went away because she begged it.

With stiff, painful movements and sweat drenching the entire upper-portion of her body, she forced herself into a sitting position. Fever-bright eyes again and again raked the darkness and found nothing.

"Where are you?" She demanded, voice cracking in her raw throat. "Why won't you show yourself?"

"I'm right where you left me."

With a shrinking horror, Azula glanced towards the large, ornate mirror where she remembered catching a flash of her mother's golden eyes the previous night.

"That's right," Ursa encouraged, delighted. "Come, let me have a look at you. Let me see my daughter."

Azula drew back. No. The world around her was so uncertain now, but even then she knew the last thing she wanted to do was approach that mirror.

A spark of her old, steely defiance momentarily hardened her resolve. She had pandered to this tyrannical matriarch's wishes long enough in her asylum cell. She did not have to do it here under the roof of her own home. And if Ursa was really stuck behind the glass then she had no power to force her.

Or so she thought.

"I can't walk," she answered simply. "Sorry."

Ursa laughed. A chilling, malicious sound which was nothing like the rich laughter Azula remembered – and was reserved for Zuko.

"Is _Azula_ really so easily foiled?" Ursa asked with disbelief. Then with a callous raw:

"If you can't walk, _crawl_! Get down on your knees. Do as your father taught you best."

Bitter tears fell without permission down Azula's cheeks, hot with the shame of weakness. She angrily wiped them away. What was it about this woman which paralysed her? _Her_!

"I don't want to," she shook her head. "You can't make me."

Ursa clucked her tongue. A sugar-sweet patronization.

"Well actually, I can." Her voice undulated in waves of sound growing first louder, then quieter. "I'm inside your mind. I'm underneath your skin. I'm in every breath you take, behind every word you say. I _own_ you, Azula. You are _mine_! And I can hurt you – if I want to."

A sharp, agonising pain suddenly erupted across her forearm, one she knew only as perfectly manicured fingernails ripping into flesh. No, it wasn't possible. It wasn't _possible_!

She tore at the sleeve of her nightgown, forcing it up past her shoulder, and had to bit her wrist to keep from screaming. There before her eyes her skin split into four parallel welts, which rapidly leaked streams hot, vital blood down her arm and onto the sheets.

"Stop!" She begged "Stop it, please!"

There was too much blood.

Far too much blood.

It was pooling around her body, the level rising up to her waist. She would drown in it if it didn't stop soon. How could there be so much blood inside one person?

She pressed the bedsheets to her arm, applied pressure like she had been taught in an attempt to stop the bleeding. But the sheets just came away red and useless. And the blood continued pouring.

"I'll crawl!" she screamed, " I'll crawl!"

As suddenly as it started, it stopped.

She blinked and the sheets were white again, as if her blood had never stained them. With sickening trepidation, she raised her fingers to inspect the skin at her forearm, finding it perfect and whole once again. She couldn't bite back the moan that was building in her throat.

Why was this happening to her?

"A-zu-la." Her mother reminded her.

She pushed back the covers and sank painfully, pitifully to the floor. Her whole body trembled and ached in protest, she was not fit, not well enough for this. On all fours like an animal she crawled to the mirror: a level of degradation she thought she had left back at the asylum.

"There you are," crooned Ursa happily at her arrival.

Azula looked into the glass and saw herself as a vision she did not recognise. Ursa stood above her with a hand resting on her shoulder, the fingers even now biting into her skin. She looked into her mother's eyes, which were completely devoid of emotion. Dolls eyes in their empty, cold life-likeness.

"Why are you doing this to me?"

"Haven't you figured it out yet?" Ursa asked with a small quirk of her lip.

"Because you think I'm a monster."

"No, _you_ think you're a monster. I'm just the voice you've given to that fear."

Azula shrunk back from the accusation. Was that true?

For the last ten years had she just been projecting her own negative feelings about herself onto her representation of Ursa? Giving them an external source so that she could pretend they were not a part of her?

But no. Ursa had _always_ been cold and admonishing to her. She had _always_ favoured Zuko because, even from an early age, she had recognised something in her daughter that she didn't like.

Hadn't she?

"Look into the mirror," Ursa instructed. "What do you see?"

Azula forced her pride to take in the gaunt, sallow countenance; the hair which fell in lank, jagged bangs across her face; the bruise-like shadows under eyes which had lost everything of their burning intensity; and the spider-web cracks on her lips which bled with the smallest stretch of expression.

"A wreck," she admitted, turning away.

"You see the culmination of every evil thing you have done." Ursa corrected severally. "We do not live in a vacuum, above and apart from our actions. Every choice we make leaves a physical mark on who we are. You see yourself truer now than you have ever seen before."

"A monster." Azula summarised.

But even as she said it, a shiver ran along the length of her spine: a wave of dissent riling against the very title she had carried with her out of childhood, as if something about its identity just didn't fit her any more.

"But I didn't mean … I was just _trying_ …"

The protests died in her throat as she realized she did not have an excuse. She had understood the nature of her actions and she had performed them anyway. There was no departing from that. It didn't matter that her perception had been skewed. It didn't matter that her father had _lied to her_. Made her believe she was fighting an _honourable_ war, if there ever was such a thing.

"You were ruthless, megalomaniac and cruel, my daughter." Ursa condemned. "And because of your actions you turned you heart cold and put out your fire. You used fear to control everyone who cared about you. And what were you _really_ afraid of? Trust? Intimacy Exposure?" Ursa laughed. "You were afraid because you knew, deep down, that no-one could ever love you. Even your father didn't love you. You were the perfect solider. Nothing more."

Azula shrunk from her mother's words as if they were a physical blow that left her reeling. She felt sick. He father _respected_ her! Her father was _proud_ of her!

But then pride was not love, it was vanity. And respect didn't necessarily arise from admiration. Man respects a wild animal because he is smart enough to know that it could disembowel him in a second, but he does not love it.

"Well," Ursa amended with a grin, "almost perfect. You did make one miscalculation. You assumed that fear was the greatest incentive to loyalty. That, because you could never attain it, love was weak. People conquer their fears, Azula, but they never really conquer their hearts. Because you didn't understand that, you now have no-body."

Azula felt the premonitory tremor in her lower jaw, the ache of grief in her throat. She would not cry. Not again. Not in front of _her_. She drew herself up and said, with as much conviction and feeling as she could muster:

"I have Zuko."

But the assurance died on her lips at the memory of his words:

_If she doesn't want to be helped then leave her._

Leave her to rot.

Maybe she had had Zuko before, but somehow she had managed to push even him away. What was _wrong_ with her?

"Do you _really_?" Ursa's tone rose with inflection.

Suddenly the surface of the mirror broke like water disturbed in a pond, and Azula was looking at herself three years previous as she watched her brother face their father in that defining Agni Kai.

"And what kindness have you ever shown your brother?"

She watched her vicious, vindicated grin at Zuko's horrific scream. That calculating, strategist's twinkle in her eye which viewed her brother as an expendable piece to be played and then disposed: the lotus tile in Pai Sho

And for good measure, the triumphant gesture of her hand, which showed she had inched one step closer to achieving the throne. Had she really only been eleven and already so … misguided?

"What have you ever done to _deserve_ his protection?"

A flash of lightening and Zuko was laying motionless on the ground.

But wait - ! That hadn't been her fault! She had been aiming for the water-tribe peasant, and Zuko had been a fool and tried to intercept it. He had brought it on himself!

She wrapped her arms around her torso, trying to comfort herself with a quick, rocking motion, ignoring the pain which burst like fire across her body.

"Go away," she ordered, "leave me alone.

"Now _there's_ the daughter that I know." Ursa laughed. "You know how to make me disappear, Azula. Go on, break the glass, smash the mirror."

She couldn't. She couldn't. Her body ached and trembled too much to free her from this torment. She didn't have the strength enough for her own salvation. She cradled her head in her hands, willing her life to just fade into darkness where Ursa could no reach her. Willing everything to just _stop_.

Ursa's voice was everywhere: in the moonlight, in the corridor, in her mind. It crawled over the walls like some frightful manifestation of the spirit Koh: using a thousand different voices, throwing a thousand simultaneous tones:

" - Why are you crying, Azula? -"

" - What's frightened you, my darling? -"  
" - A-zu-la -"  
" - Not even your father loved you -"  
" - Perfect soilder -"

" - _Monster_ -"  
" - Azula -"

" - _Azula_ -"

" - AZULA -"

With a frenzied, desperate scream, Azula forced herself agonisingly to her feet, tore down the large, ornate mirror and smashed it against the floor. The glass skittered like crystal shards across the stone. Beautiful and dangerous, just like Ursa. Just like _she_ used to be. She could still hear her mother's laughter in their sound.

Her breaths tore from her in ragged gasps, lunching her into another violent fit of coughing which had her vision wavering at the edges. Her injured legs trembled beneath her and gave way, pitching her forward onto her hands and knees amongst the broken shards.

It took as long as the sound of voices outside the door for her to realize that she had not won. That she had not made her mother disappear, but had set her free. No longer confined behind the glass Ursa now walked the corridors of the palace: malevolent, dangerous and so much more powerful.

She moaned as she watched her blood spread across the stone, knowing it was no illusion this time even if she could not feel the pain.

"Fire-Lord Zuko, what's happening?"

She cringed away from the voices outsider her door. No, don't let them in. Don't let them see me like this.

"Everything's under control," came Zuko's voice, smooth with diplomacy.

Someone tried the handle and found it locked. Who had locked the door?

"But sir," one of the servants protested, "the smash! The _scream_!"

"I can only apologise for your untimely awakening." The Fire-Lord answered in a tone which was as authoritative as it was polite. "Please return to your beds, it won't happen again. You have my word."

_You have my word_. Azula shivered. What was Zuko going to do? How did he plan to silence her? She thought the punishments would end once she left the asylum. That had been the deal! Her brother was false and mendacious, he had made her believe that he was going to look after her. Not that she needed anybody.

The sound of retreating footsteps announced the servant's departure, but someone still lingered in the corridor. Zuko addressed them gently.

"Stay in our room."

The voice which answered was different from the ones who had spoken before. Deep and mellow, but still unmistakably female – and strangely familiar, though Azula couldn't place why.

"I'm no afraid of her," they protested.

"I never said you were," Zuko countered calmly. "Please."

A sharp exhale.

"Fine."

The slam of a door across the hallway told Azula her and Zuko were alone.

"Azula?" Zuko called after a moment, his voice close against the wood. "Azula, listen to me. The door's locked – I don't know how – and I'm going to have to break it down. So I need you to stay calm for me, okay? Can you do that? Azula?"

Calm! She almost laughed. There was nothing in the world that could induce her to be calm after what she had seen tonight. But, though he asked for it, Zuko didn't seem to need her consent.

Why did Zuko even care? He had made his affections perfectly clear before. Going back on them now just demonstrated a weak will, not exactly a desirable trait in the nation's new Fire-Lord.

Her blood was still seeping over the stone. She wiped her palms on her nightdress, watching the white stain red. How closely did dreams mirror reality? What made this time real and the other an illusion?

She heard his shoulder strike the door once, twice, three times. The splinter of wood announced his success and then she was flooded by light. She raised a hand to shield her eyes.

The sight of his sister covered in blood, kneeling in a halo of broken glass, which glittered and twinkled in the ambiance of the hall-light, was the most horrific, frighting thing Zuko had ever seen.

"What happened?" he choked out.

She tried to tell him, she tried to _explain_. But the only sound she could push out of her swollen throat was a great, hiccuping sob. How pathetic.

He closed the distance between them in five strides, snatching a pillowcase off the bed and tearing it in half. He threw himself down in front of her, too close and too quick, the fear in his eyes looking like anger.

She tried to pull away from him. She hadn't meant to do it. He had to know.

But he stopped her.

"We need to get this bleeding under control," he told her firmly.

She blinked at him hazily as he gently guided her hands to rest palm-up on his lap, pressing the material against them to staunch the flow of blood so he could better assess the damage. He groaned.

"Some of these are deep. _Dammit, Azula._"

Even through blood-loss she understood that the anger was directed towards himself and not her. But what she did not understand was why his tenderness – which did not suggest any punishment to come – his simple touch as he cradled her hands, and treated her like someone _worthy_ of his affection, filled her with so much hope and so much grief. Was it because, even despite everything she had done, she _did_ still have his protection? Because Ursa had been wrong, and this was what _gratitude_ felt like?

She was tried. So tried of perfection and isolation, worn down to the bone by the hollowness and loneliness of existing above and beyond everybody else. Maybe she did not deserve to be trusted, and maybe Zuko did not deserve her trust, but weren't they then better matched than anybody else to exchange it? And maybe trust _was_ for fools. But she thought she might just be fool enough to try it. Fool enough to admit that she was not invincible and, just like everyone else, she needed _somebody_. She couldn't be her father's vision any longer. Not without sacrificing more of herself than she had left to give.

In a sudden, desperate movement, she buried her face in Zuko's shoulder, sobs ripping from her throat thicker and faster than they had ever done in her life. It was a moment before Zuko's arms closed around her, shock delaying the reaction, but when they did it was with a tenacity that told her he was never going to let go. She felt his own tears fall onto her crown.

"I'm sorry," she choked. "I'm sorry for everything I've done."

"I know. I know you are," he told her earnestly. Then with vehemence: "And I'm sorry for what I said. I was angry and I took it out on you. But Azula you've got to believe me that I never meant for any of this to happen. I thought you were _safe_. They told me you were getting _better._ I would never have put you in the hands of someone who would hurt you, if I would've know. And I can't forgive myself for it."

"I know," she hiccuped wetly after a moment. "Guess our guilt makes us even then."

"Yeah," Zuko agreed holding her closer, "I guess it does."

As her sobs began to taper to quick hitches in her breath, Azula felt herself lifted out of the glass and carried a short distance away where she was cradled against her brother's chest. She didn't know which one of them it was who refused to let go, but she didn't care. She just wanted to stay here forever and feel safe. She wanted someone else to be responsible for holding her together, because every way _she_ knew had stopped working a long time ago.

For someone, whose defining characteristic is strength, to suddenly _fail_ to be strong is frightening. Both for the person involved and the people around them. It defamiliarises everything you think you understand about the world.

Zuko gently peeled the cloth away from her palms, noting the now-sluggish flow of blood with satisfaction. There didn't look to be any glass in the wounds, but that was something which would have to be further investigated tomorrow, meaning another visit from Zhara. Which he was sure Azula would relish. When she had breath enough to speak he asked her:

"What happened?"

It was the last question in the world she wanted to answer, and yet she could not avoid it. She would have to tell him just how far into crazy she had wandered, and hope to Agni that he didn't jump ship. She dredged up her voice, hesitating over every word.

"I saw her."

Her tone compensated for her obscurity and she knew he would not fail to catch it. She only used it in reference to one person.

She felt a shiver run down her brother's spine before he could stop it, her heart pounding with fear and shame. She wished everything could just stay inside her head. Speaking it aloud only made it more real. Worse.

"You saw mother." Zuko guessed. She nodded miserably against his shoulder.

"You saw her at the asylum too?"

So her brother remembered what must have looked like her invisible conversation. She nodded again.

"She's the voice you hear inside your head," Zuko realized with devastation.

And how could that be, he wondered. How could Azula be persecuted by Ursa in her mind and not _Ozai_? But then again maybe the reason was obvious. Azula had never had to imagine Ozai's persecution, it was a reality of her everyday life. Completely banal.

"Not inside," Azula admitted wretchedly. "Not any more."

"What do you mean?"

"I broke the mirror. I let her out. Made her more powerful than every." She tried to conceal the thrill of fear in her voice, but it betrayed her anyway.

Zuko rested his chin on top of her head, his words coming out as vibration.

"I won't let anybody hurt you."

She wished that were true.

"You can't stop her."

* * *

For what felt like hours, even after she had succumbed to exhaustion, Zuko sat with her in his arms. He watched the moonlight bathe her, beautiful and broken as she was, and felt completely powerless. The fever still raged across her skin which the healers had mistaken for her own internal fire.

He sent a silent, desperate prayer to Agni for the strength and wisdom to help her because, with the best will in the world, he didn't know how to begin.

So much emphasis had been placed on Azula's appalling physical condition that, he was ashamed to admit, her psyche had fallen under the radar. Looking at the gashes on her hands, which could have been so much worse, he realized that this was a mistake they couldn't afford again. But wounds could be visibly healed. Starvation could be assured by food. How was he supposed to protect Azula from things which only existed inside her own mind? How did he heal _that_?

How did he confront the reality of mental illness when it filled him both with pity and with fear?

Mai's question circulated in his mind again, and it was only now he realized it had been the wrong one from the start. That it was not what he wanted _from_ Azula, but what he wanted _for_ her. He wanted her to find balance within herself. He wanted her to be at peace with her own mind.

A creak of the door caught his attention and he glanced up to see Mai hugging her slender body against the frame. Her expression, as it always was these days, was ambivalent. Torn between anger and sympathy.

"Hey," he greeted her softly.

"Hey," she echoed. Her eyes flicked back and forth between the siblings; a quiet horror slowly settling on her face as she took in Azula's condition. And her position in her brother's arms.

"Is … is she okay?"

Honestly Zuko did not know how to answer. If she really _did_ seek an answer, or she was just speaking to fill the silence. He could see she was afraid, but she was trying to hide it.

Her face darkened and she turned away.

"Never mind. That was a stupid question."

* * *

_Ha, well there you go. Hopefully Azula was not too out of character, you wouldn't believe how much I agonized over her reactions! But then we do see a more emotional and a more fragile side to her in reference to her psyche. And right here she does reach a new limit of low. I know, I'm just trying to justify my shameless brother and sister moment. I admit it, but there had to be a point where Zuko realized the extent of what he was dealing with, and Azula that she couldn't do this alone._

_Also, just a reminder Ursa is not Ursa but Azula's **representation** of her. Which is obviously skewed. I sort of view her as a manifestation for Azula's 'inner' voice. That part of herself which wasn't always so collected and sure about everything she was doing. That little bit of conscience that she supressed._

_And I am terrible at coming up with names. I admit it. 'Zhara' was the best I could do :')_

_As always, thank you for reading and feel free to review. _


	4. It's Not Like You To Say Sorry

You wouldn't believe how hard it was to get this uploaded! First off I have no internet, which means this is up so much later than I intended (sneakily using my neighbour's while they are out, shhh) and secondly tried to access off my old computer and the 'website was unavailable' so I assumed the site was down. Try it on my new computer just for arguments sake and bam, there it is no problem at all. Technology! :/

I really don't like the first section of this piece but it seemed somehow wrong just to cut it out completely. Therefore, you have authorial permission to skip the first section :'). I also had entirely too much fun with Suki and Ty Lee. I wanted to try and write out how I thought our little acrobat would fit into the Kyoshi Warriors, and Suki I think would be a very wise and just leader.

The rest I feel slightly better about, but then "The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist had to start with" - William Faulkner.

I still don't own anything. I still make no profit.

And wishing anyone who reads author's notes a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! :)

* * *

**Chapter Four:**

_It's Not Like You To Say Sorry_

* * *

Four flags flying in unity: Fire, Earth, Air and Water. A future moving forward together.

As the rugged mountains broke to admit the first view of the palace from the east, Ty Lee could not help but giggle a little at Zuko's ostentation. She watched as the rising sun reflected off the vast red and gold artifice, making the whole building appear to smoulder before her eyes: an ember on the verge of burning out, and a spark just about to ignite.

After three-weeks patrolling some of the most remote regions in the Earth-Kingdom she was more than ready to re-embrace luxury for a spell; and the palace meant good food, warm beds and a glorious absence of responsibility. But most of all the palace meant Mai, who she missed more than words could express. And in the changes Zuko had wrought, in the day-to-day lives of all those who inhabited it, there was an air of happiness and contentment which had not been present since before the Lady Ursa disappeared.

She grinned, hopping carelessly back and forth between the razor-sharp edges of the rocks, balancing on their thin seams just like she used to do in the circus: drinking in the thrill of being one misplaced step away from certain destruction. She glanced at the rocks critically – okay, so certain destruction was a slight exaggeration, but a slip would hurt. She imagined the wind as the roar of the crowd in her ears, let it fill her up with oxygen as she readied herself for the final show-stopping stunt which would see the stands overflow with gold pieces as the audience defied her to cheat death one more time.

"Be care -!" Suki's voice carried from behind, half-shrill with panic. Then the Kyoshi leader caught herself and rolled her eyes. "Never mind."

The other Warriors took up a chant:

"She flies like a bird -"

" - Stings like a hornet-bee - "

" - And snores like a hippopotamus-bear - "

" - With a head-cold."

A chorus of fond laughter erupted and Ty Lee laughed along with her sisters, landing a perfect cartwheel on a razor-point.

It was strange, initially she had run away to join the circus out of a crisis of individuality: because she wanted to be different, to set herself apart. But being a Kyoshi Warrior automatically meant embracing a communal identity, meant being, once again, part of a matched set – and went against everything she thought she had ever known about herself. Yet neither decision felt wrong to her, neither _felt_ like a betrayal, because both had made her happy at vastly different points in her life. And rather than fighting a war inside her, the two choices happily co-existed, as separate and united as light and dark: that she craved singularity, but realistically could never be happy alone.

The end of the war meant new ways of thinking, of bridging the distances which had opened up between the four Nations, and trying desperately not to repeat the mistakes of the past. By joining the Kyoshi Warriors she liked to consider that she was doing her part. For while the Warriors flattered themselves as Zuko's personal guard, their true loyalties extended from the furthest tip of the Fire-Nation to the most remote islands of the Earth-Kingdom, touching every town, city and village in between. Their resources eternally and equally divided, eternally and equally balanced.

* * *

The sun was just climbing into its midday arch when they finally reached the palace, and were immediately apprehended by a messenger who handed a scroll to Suki and, to Ty Lee's surprise, herself. She stared at Zuko's seal for a moment: a pair of Dao swords crossed and wreathed in fire, before slipping her thumb beneath the blob wax and beginning to read. The message was brief in the extreme, stating simply:

_Azula's home. Second floor, fifth room on the left._

Yet the words stole the breath from her with the knock-down power of a punch.

Azula!

Azula was _here!_

Right now.

Somewhere in the palace.

She quickly scanned the second floor windows from left to right, half expecting to see the Fire-princess, in full warrior's regalia and with her trademark sardonic slash, watching over every fraction of life fall as exactly into place as she had planned it.

But the windows were cold and empty.

A second later Suki lowered her own, slightly longer, message with a hard expression.

"What is it?" One of the Warriors ventured hesitantly.

"Princess Azula." Suki paused as if the words weighed heavily on her tongue, and shifted their bulk with every forced, measured breath until they were difficult, almost impossible, to speak around. She swallowed. "Princess Azula has been released into the care and charge of her brother. Here at the palace."

A collective hiss broke through six pairs of painted lips like water escaping a damn, as the Warriors recoiled back from the name which commanded its own physical presence. Ty Lee looked between her sisters nervously, a bubble of conflict rising uncomfortably in her chest.

She knew better than most what Azula had done, but even then she couldn't view her with their disdain. She couldn't erase a decade of friendship just because – forget the consequences for a moment – Azula had made some bad decisions.

Maybe that made her foolish and naive. She didn't know.

Maybe that made her humanitarian.

What she did know, however, was that Zuko was depending on exactly that naivety or foolishness to be her driving instinct, because one thing his scroll made clear – about the only thing, actually – was that she was being summoned.

And because it was _Zuko_ who summoned her, she also had the tacit right to refuse. If she wanted to.

Her shoulders slumped forward. For the first time since joining the Kyoshi Warriors she truly felt removed and separated from them: an imposter, a fraud, a liar. And she didn't enjoy the experience.

She thought she was through with this business choosing loyalties, choosing _sides_. She thought all that division had ended with the war.

"What do we do?" Carlah asked fearfully.

"Nothing," Suki answered after a time. "We do nothing. Our duties are to protect the Fire-Lord and safeguard the Fire and Earth kingdoms. Whether Azula is here or not has no bearing on that. We continue as before."

"But ..." The Warrior suppressed a shudder. "But what if we run into her?"

Suki's expression softened slightly.

"I don't think she'll be up and about for a while."

Ty Lee frowned. Azula languish around in bed all day when there were orders to give, plans to forge and a Nation to steer back from the brink of destruction? Not likely.

"And if we _do_ have the misfortune of running into her," Suki continued sternly, "then we will treat her with the dignity and respect due to a princess of the Fire-Nation." A crease formed between her eyebrows, "Then wash the bitter taste from our mouths afterwards."

She waved her fellow Warriors on ahead of her into the palace.

Ty Lee hesitated just the fraction of a second too long, and her conflict was exposed.

When Suki caught her eye, the leader motioned her towards the fountain which stood in the middle of the court-yard. Suki's movements were slow and languid, and Ty Lee realised with a pang that it was the first time she had ever seen the Warrior show any signs of weariness.

The acrobat perched on the ledge, gazing into the water. She distantly remembered a day in the palace gardens, many years before, where Azula had set light to an apple on Mai's head, and Zuko had knocked both of them into the fountain trying to put it out. The couple had been just a lovably awkward and indiscreet even then.

That was what she missed. The four of them just being together.

"You're going to see her."

It wasn't a question or accusation. Just a mere statement of fact.

She looked over to where Suki sat beside her, hands trapped between the pressure of her knees.

"Yes." She felt the tension in her chest melt away at the admission.

"You have a very forgiving nature. Just be careful that people don't take advantage of it."

Ty Lee felt obliged to defend her friend's honour.

"Zuko would never do that," she hurried to reassure. "It was _my_ choice to see Azula."

"I didn't mean Zuko," Suki admitted with a sad smile.

"Oh."

There wasn't really much she could say to that.

It wasn't fair. Everyone assumed Azula was bad but she wasn't. She was … hard. Just like a shell. She felt that she needed to protect herself from the world, so she made her exterior into armour, a beautiful barricade, and hid her vulnerable centre behind it.

But as hard as a shell was it was also brittle, it had flaws. And with the right force, from the right angle, it would shatter every time.

Suki shifted beside her on the ledge: an uncomfortable sacrifice.

"You know, loyalty doesn't mean giving up old friends for new ones. We protect two kingdoms, which means our hearts live in two places. Not torn or divided, but balanced."

With a sudden rush of gratitude, Ty Lee threw her arms around Suki's neck, causing the other girl to admit a small 'oof' as the air was unceremoniously knocked from her lungs. In all the weeks she had spent with them, after all they had seen and experienced together, she had never been prouder than in this moment to be a Kyoshi Warrior. It was easy to make promises of equality and understanding. It was the hardest thing in the world to fulfil them.

Ty Lee belonged to the Fire-Nation, but she also belonged to the Earth-Kingdom, because she chose to. She could maintain her friendships with Mai and Azula _and_ her sister Warriors without fear or guilt, because she chose to. Light and dark, yin and yang, two sides to her identity.

"Thank you."

Suki nodded and stood, brushing down her uniform.

Leader. Councillor. Teenager. Friend.

"We're leaving for the West Coast tomorrow. It's up to you whether or not you want to come." She added sincerely: "Either way we'll understand."

* * *

It was a little after mid-morning when Azula awoke and immediately regretted it. The pain of her accumulated abuses hit her with the force of an Earth-bender attack, treating her to every stabbing, aching permutation it was possible to experience, simultaneously. But worse than that she actually _felt_ awful: weak and shivery and … somehow dense? As if her body, rather than shedding three-quarters of it weight, had gained that and more in the space of one night.

When she lifted her head the word lurched sickeningly and dropped away from her, and she was forced to admit it: for the first time in living memory she felt _ill_.

She groaned with a mixture of fear and frustration. She did not like the feeling.

A movement in the corner of the room caught her attention and with a creeping dread she shifted her head slightly on the pillow to peer between the posts

In one of two chairs that congregated in the corner of her chamber and rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Zuko shifted and sat up drowsily. His hair, loose from its top-knot, kicked out at strange angles all on one side and his creased tunic was still stained with the remnants of her blood like some macabre ink-blot painting.

It took a moment for the question to occur to her sluggish mind: had he slept there all night?

"Hey," he mumbled uncertainly, stretching the stiff muscles in his back, "are you awake?"

Well if he had it had been for his own stupidities sake … !

She caught herself.

If Zuko had stayed then it had been for her protection. It had been an act of _compassion_ – she grimaced at the word – not insult. It meant he believed her that Ursa was a threat.

That someone was on her side again.

"I'm awake," she rasped painfully.

Evidently the screaming she'd indulged in the previous night hadn't been kind to her throat. She raised a hand instinctively to massage the area, but instead of the smooth touch of skin she felt something coarse.

She pulled her hand back in shock, blinking down at the appendage with a wavering, unfocused glare. It was swathed in some sort of white material … ?

"Zhara cleaned and bandaged your hands while you were still asleep," came Zuko's voice from somewhere beside her. When did he get there? "Luckily there was no glass, so they should heal quickly." He tried to smile but it didn't quite reach his eyes.

She groaned. She felt disorientated and heavy, as if her mind and body had been filled with cement which was slowly hardening in the heat she was radiating. Each breath that she took was a measured and precise effort that rattled in her chest, caught in her clogged throat and threatened to launch her into a brutal and protracted coughing fit that she just didn't have the energy to sustain.

A shiver of heat trickled down her spine, and with it a burgeoning sense of shame for the weakness and instability she had betrayed the previous night.

Usually she was better at controlling it. She didn't know what had slipped. Or why.

She glanced to scene of her humiliation – the palace was collecting them en mass apparently.

The empty frame was gone, the stone floor had be scrubbed of its mural, and the broken glass swept away as if nothing had ever happened. But it had. _She_ had made it. She had set her free. They could scrub and sweep as much as they liked but they couldn't cover _that_ up! Ursa was out there now, waiting, and it was only a matter of time.

She sensed Zuko watching her. No, _scrutinizing_ her, with that same intrusive intensity he had demonstrated at the asylum. She had expected that. She searched for the tell-tale signs: repulsion, fear, ignominy, which she had come to view as the usual responses to her demonstrations of insanity. But, curiously, she marked none of them in him. Instead he just looked … concerned, _compassionate_.

And yet, strangely, that didn't turn her already delicate stomach.

"How are you feeling?" He asked finally.

She could lie to him. Exercise some of her old mendacity, force the distance which had been somewhat bridged between them back into the gaping ravine she was used to. But she didn't see any point in it now.

Maybe she needed him, even is she preferred to pretend to herself that she didn't?

Maybe he needed her?

"Awful," she replied honestly.

By now she anticipated the hand even before he lifted it to her forehead. The contact, however, still caused a knot to twist in the pit of her stomach.

"Your fever's gone up," he sighed, an edge of desperation pulling at his tone. "Wait here."

She closed her eyes and buried her face in the pillow, trying to forget all the pains and protests of her body. Well damn, she thought sardonically, and she'd _certainly_ been planning to go somewhere else.

In the bathroom which adjoined her chamber she heard the sound of running water and then his returning footsteps. Something cold and slightly rough was pressed against the back her neck and she yelped, grimacing. The world oscillated as she tried to pull away.

"Relax," Zuko soothed, steadying her and pressing the flannel to the back of her neck again.

He brushed a second across her forehead, wiping away the perspiration she was embarrassed to admit had gathered there. She submitted to his tending, when even yesterday she would have shunned it.

Why was he still here? She didn't had disgraced herself, she _deserved_ his ignominy. Wasn't that what she had always been taught?

Yet he acted like her compliance was something golden. A reward, long strived for and finally won.

Maybe insanity was a vein running through their whole family and she just happened to be the figurehead?

She coughed weakly into her fist, the effort not even enough to clear the mucous in her throat.

"Do you think you can try something for me?" Zuko asked, his voice sounding strangely distant and distorted, as if it had to carry the whole length of a tunnel to reach her. She blinked and forced herself to focus on his face. The lurid scar was not quite so noticeable under his hair.

He didn't seem to need her agreement however, for, with one had still holding the flannel against the back of her neck, he reached across to the bedside table and retrieved a glass of water. Except, where the contents should had been clear and transparent, they were tainted with an insidious amber glow.

She drew back, feeling panic rise in her already heavy chest. Couldn't Zuko see that the water had been tampered with?! Couldn't he understand that this was all part of Ursa's plan?!

He laughed humourlessly.

"It's just water, mixed with lemon and honey. It'll help your throat, and the sugar'll give you energy."

Humph. That was exactly what Ursa would want him to think.

She crossed her arms, ignoring the pain the motion of dissent cost her.

She expected him to be impatient, a fiery temper was, after all, something they both had in common, but he disappointed her yet again. When had her brother stopped being so predictable?

Seeing her resistance he rolled his eyes and took a generous demonstrative drink. He thought they had moved past this.

She watched critically for any sign of reaction.

Suddenly his doubtful expression split into a look of surprise and he smacked his lips appreciatively.

"It actually tastes good," he admitted, offering it to her again. "I didn't think it would."

She took it grudgingly, still regarding the amber contents with undisguised suspicion.

She knew it would not stay down so she didn't see the point in trying. But Zuko was watching her imploringly, and she was beginning to feel like _maybe_ she owed him the effort.

She raised the glass with shaking hands to her lips, taking the smallest sip she could manage.

The sharp, sweet taste burst violently across her tongue, causing her whole mouth to tingle and flood with saliva. She swallowed the liquid convulsively, anything to make the unpleasant sensation stop. But it continued to tingle as it went down, making her whole body crawl with an itch that she couldn't scratch.

When it finally hit her stomach it fell like a lead weight, and she immediately lurched to the edge of the bed with a horrible sense of inevitability. Zuko's hand caught her, and instead he lifted the bucket and placed it beneath her chin. His fingers tracing slow circles onto the top of her back, his thumb still holding the flannel in place.

She waited and waited, Agni she _hated_ this. She hated being so weak, of not even being able to control her own body. Maybe she didn't want to be perfect any more, and maybe she realized that she didn't need to be in control of _everything_, but she at least wanted to be in control of that. She deserved to be, didn't she?

After a while Zuko moved the bucket away.

"No ..." she protested weakly.

"Azula you don't need it," he coaxed. "If you were going to be sick you would have been already."

What was that tone in his voice? It was almost smug, triumphant. It was grating whatever its allegiance.

Maybe then she'd make herself sick to spite him!

She shivered at the thought.

No, maybe not.

At her shiver Zuko removed the cold compress and she forced herself to bite back a moan of protest. Fire-benders were notoriously temperature sensitive, and though she was ambivalent about whether she could still identify herself as one or not, he clearly considered that she might retain the sensitivity. A fever was one thing, but if her temperature was to fall _too low_ under his ministrations the consequences would be far worse. She guessed he must have saw something encouraging, however, because some of the tension had left his expression.

He placed a finger underneath the bottom of the glass and exerted a small upward force, a gentle reminder to drink.

For a while they sat in companionable silence as she took small, methodical sips. Though she still felt awful, the drink did help to soothe some of the rawness in her throat, and the sugar did grant her the indulgence of feeling at least half-human again. With each consecutive swallow the taste became less intense, or else she became desensitised to it. And maybe, she considered, it had been _taste_ that her body was rebelling against rather than food as an article. Her asylum diet – when she had eaten – had consisted of water and dry bread. Nothing to excite the senses. Looking back, three months was a long time to go without flavour. And time enough to develop a sensitivity.

The mattress dipped under Zuko's weight as he sat down beside her. She shifted her legs to accommodate him, ignoring the lance of pain the movement caused her. She waited patiently as he again placed the back of his hand against her forehead.

"You're cooler," he admitted, "but the fact that your fever's so sustained is worrying."

She hummed in agreement, the sound undercut by a thick rattling in her chest. Zuko was brooding, she recognised the dark severity in his countenance, and she waited with bated breath for the moment when the damn would break and wash her precarious holding away. When he decided that all of _this_ just wasn't something he wanted to deal with.

"Azula," he began hesitantly resolute, "I know you don't want to, but we have to talk about what happened last night."

She felt a thrill of fear. Here it came. Her _episodes_ were not usually discussed except in a therapeutic setting, and even then with a certain amount of scorn. Why would Zuko want to talk about it? As a family they shunned introspection, and it was a little late in the day to start changing the habits of a lifetime.

"We need to find out what triggers it. And how to disarm it once it starts."

She blinked at him. That wasn't what she was expecting.

He fixed her with an earnest, vulnerable stare which absorbed her fear and reflected his back at her. Fear not only of what he had seen, but that he was inadequate to the challenge of meeting it. Fear that she would never be the person he had known again. Her own fear.

The words echoed in her mind: we need to find out what triggers it. _We_. Together

Even after everything she had put him through he was still trying to reach her.

It was a good act and she almost believed it.

"I think it's the silence," he continued, and she could tell he had given this considerable thought. "When you're alone you mind rises up and consumes you, because there's nothing to distract it. When you have something to focus on, even just a conversation, your calmer, it anchors you." Agni, she thought, it was like being back at the asylum again. "But I can't always be here, not any more." There was a hard frustration in Zuko's tone. "I might be in a meeting, or somewhere beyond the grounds of the palace where I can't reach you in time." His eyes shone with a momentary wild panic. "So I need to find a way to help you soothe the turmoil in your mind. I need to find a way to help you learn to be alone."

She figure out what he was planning – even if whether he knew himself – but she knew didn't like it. Not least because she had already tasted too much of solitude. And that taste _did_ make her sick.

"I know things won't be easy, that there are shadows in here which frighten even you." He touched his fingers gently to her forehead again, a gesture with so different resonance. "But I _can_ promise you that things will be different this time, that I _can_ help you."

Despair rose within her like a bubble from a cesspit: full of ugliness and worldly grime.

"Help?" she croaked forlornly. "How can you possibly help me?"

Not even an institution which _catered_ to madness had done that. She'd gone in saner than she had come out.

With a desperate conviction he took both of her hands in his, careful not to aggravate their injuries, and raised them to his face pressing them against the tight, puckered skin of his scar, which he knew she could feel even through the fabric. It was the first time he had ever formally called her attention to it. The mark, the brand, the _imperfection_ they both had in common. Except she wore hers where it wasn't always visible to see.

"I can help you distinguish between what's real and what isn't. If you'll allow me."

Even half dazed and heavy she understood what he was really asking.

Faith.

Trust.

Too much?

"I promise I'll tell you when I see her again," she rasped.

Then, because the only thing more depressing than experiencing insanity was talking about it, and because sincerity, _honesty_ was a confusingly new and old territory for their relationship, she forced her gravelly voice into a wry tone, and her cracked lips into a grimacing smile.

"Sorry about the mirror."

Zuko chuckled despite himself, allowing her hands to fall back on the sheets. The mirror had been a present from some hapless relation on their father's … _Ozai's_ coronation. It's eye-offending hideousness had been shut up in this room ever since.

"Don't worry about it, accidents happen. Sometimes quite fortunately."

Suddenly Zuko glanced towards the sun's arch outside the large sash windows which dominated the left wall of her chamber and smiled. He pulled a red satin tunic out of the dresser and handed it to her.

"Put this on, there's someone here to see you."

Azula frowned but complied, wrapping herself in the colour that had always symbolised strength.

Who, besides Zuko, would be willing to see her?

* * *

Ty Lee did not trouble herself with something as banal as knocking. She burst into the room Zuko had specified as Azula's with the rapidity of a bullet fired at close range: a blur of green, a streak of white and two lines of red.

Locking onto her target sitting amongst the swathes and folds of an expansive four-poster bed, she pounced on the unsuspecting Fire-princess with a shout of 'Azula!' bowling her over with the sheer force of her embrace.

"Not so rough," came Zuko's voice from somewhere near at hand, "she's still - "

But what Azula was still Ty Lee never got to here, for at that moment she and Zuko both drew up short at the sound emanating from the fire-princess' lips.

Laughter.

Not the powerful, condescending chortle Ty Lee was familiar with. This laugh was rippling and liquid, like water warmed in the heat of the sun. It sounded nothing like Azula at all.

With mild confusion Ty Lee pulled back, all the better to survey her friend, but Azula's hands tightened into an insistent, vice-like grip that forbade her from breaking away. On reflection that really should have been her first indication that something was terribly wrong. At best Azula _tolerated_ hugs. She definitely didn't insist upon them.

However, Ty Lee merely grinned and gushed obliviously.

"I missed you too!"

The fire-princess buried her face into the nape of Ty Lee's neck, breathing in the familiar Jasmine and wild-grass scent which clung to the acrobat like the scent of home. The tears welled and spilt from here eyes before she could muster the will to stop them, but she didn't care. She would spill a hundred more if that was what it took to make her _stay_.

She didn't deserve it, the forgiveness the acrobat gave so freely. But Agni she wanted it.

"You're here," she croaked out,.

"Of course I'm here!" Ty Lee rolled her eyes. Did Azula really think her new-found duties would prevent her from visiting? That demonstrated a startling lack of faith.

Suddenly something occurred to her and her face folded into a frown.

"Hey," she said with concern, "you don't sound so good. Are you sick?"

To Ty Lee's surprise Azula's grip abruptly slackened, and the fire-princess pushed away from her with a self-directed violence that she did not understand.

Leaning back against the headboard, the Azula invited Ty Lee to look at her, vulnerable and completely exposed. To see just how far she had fallen.

With slow deliberation, like water trying to penetrate rock Ty Lee looked, and felt some obscure and vital part of herself break. The bandages and prominent bones made little to no impression on her; instead what told her just how far Azula had slipped from perfect was the hair which hung loose and uncombed like a black halo around her shoulders, and the eyes whose contracted pupils gave her the contentious haunted appearence of living in a nightmare.

"What happened?" Ty Lee gasped, horrified.

Azula shook her head and turned away.

"'Zula?" the acrobat pleaded fearfully, reaching for her arm.

Azula snatched her arm back before curling into a tight, miserable self-embrace.

Hurt and confused Ty Lee turned to Zuko.

"What's going on?" she demanded finally.

He stood a small distance back from them, arms folded defensively across his chest and, with a pang, she realized suddenly just how exhausted he looked: as if he bore the whole weight of the Fire-nation on his shoulders. And while technically he _did_, he had never shown its strain before, not even in the early days. When he spoke too his words were heavy, and betrayed the slight sibilance of his lisp the way they always did when her was too tired to try and hide it.

"The asylum wasn't exactly fulfilling its obligations," he admitted bitterly, his hands unconsciously curling into fists and beginning to smoke. "It doesn't matter though, she'd better off here. Where people actually care about her."

It was a moment before Ty Lee understood that Zuko's words contained an implicit caution: that Azula neither wanted nor needed their pity. She needed their strength. She needed to know that they were not effected by her change, so she didn't have to feel the shame of it; that they didn't view her as different, _less_, so she didn't have to become it. She needed them to pick up the gauntlet and, just for a while, be the ones who pretended that everything was under control.

She nodded to show Zuko that she understood then, with an effortless vault of her body, she re-positioned herself so that she was facing Azula. The fire-princess looked up at her with liquid-gold eyes and Ty Lee knew that there would be no pretence required. Fallen, beleaguered, besieged, this _was_ Azula. Maybe in a truer sense than she had ever seen her.

"You're still the most beautiful, smartest, most perfect girl in the world," she winked.

It took a moment, but Azula smiled.

She held out her bandaged hands and Ty Lee eased her back up into a sitting position, wrapping a supportive arm around her waist.

It was disconcertingly horrifying and yet strangely endearing to see Azula so dependent. To be at a point of crisis in her life where she would actually allow people to help her.

Nevertheless Ty Lee almost fainted in shock when she felt the unfamiliar weight of the fire-princess' head come to rest upon her shoulder. She hesitated for the fraction of a second before slowly beginning to comb her fingers through her friend's lank hair in a comforting, maternal gesture. When Azula didn't protest she settled into a rhythm.

Zuko watched them with a painful lump swelling in his throat. He understood now what Azula needed, and it wasn't only him. He had been absent from her life for three years, but in reality he had checked out long before that. He had always assumed that she didn't need him, an image she herself had promulgated, and so he had failed to understand her. But that was an oversight neither Mai or Ty Lee had made. Maybe then it was not so surprising that she responded to Ty Lee easier and more naturally than she did himself. Maybe he would just have to accept that there were people who could help her better than him.

Except she had burned so many of those bridges, and left herself without the options.

"Hey," Ty Lee said suddenly, realizing the absence in the room. "Where's Mai?"

Azula's eyes fluttered and she confessed in a strained whisper:

"Don't know … haven't seen her."

Ty Lee raised a questioning eyebrow to Zuko. The Fire-Lord held up his hands.

"It's Mai's choice. Just like it was yours."

Ty Lee huffed.

"Well it's the _wrong_ choice."

Then, with an incredulous frown, she took in Zuko's creased tunic, the greater part of which his arms had been concealing up until now.

"Are you still in your nightwear?"

"I know, in the middle of the day," Zuko dead panned. "It's shocking."

"Why are you covered in – wait is that … _blood_?" Ty Lee gasped wide-eyed. "Is it some sort of political statement? Did you attend meetings like this?" She bit her lip. "Is this really the image you want to be presenting?"

"I haven't attended a meeting in four days," Zuko confessed, running a hand through his hair. " The nation's probably in rack and ruins by now. I don't know how Mai keeps heading people off."

"But you have been _dressed_ in four days haven't you?" Ty Lee wheedled.

"Yes, Ty Lee," Zuko laughed, "I've been dressed." He glanced at Azula whose eyes were slipping closed again.

"We had a rough night. That's all."

Ty Lee rested her chin on the top of Azula's head for a moment.

"You can't do all this on your own, you know. Not even you're that good."

"Yeah well, I don't have much choice. People aren't exactly queueing at the door to help me." The slightest tone of bitterness crept into his voice.

"We'll see about that," she promised.

Suddenly a shiver coursed through Azula's body, followed by a deep, chocking wheeze which launched her into a coughing fit. Zuko quickly pressed a towel to her lips, pounding lightly on her back while Ty Lee supported her and looked on in horror. Sometime overnight the cough had become productive, and what it produced was more insidious than the spasms themselves.

She didn't have the energy to sustain it long and she collapsed back into Ty Lee's arms.

The towel came away red in Zuko's hands. He folded it over.

"That's a scary sounding cough," Ty Lee confided shakily, instinctively tightening her grip on Azula.

"I know," Zuko admitted, wiping the corner once again across Azula's lips. "Katara's coming with Aang, Sokka and Toph in two days time. I'm going to see it she'll take a look at her."

If both parties would co-operate that long.

Azula's bleary eyes focused on her brother, her face scrunching into a grimace at the metal-sharp taste of blood on her tongue. Zuko offered her the glass but she pushed it away. Then she pushed him away too, with enough force to convey insistence.

"You want me to leave?" Zuko asked, trying not to sound as hurt as he felt.

"Go … change," she panted weakly, with a long delay between the words. " Least pretend … your _competent_." There was little to no venom in her tone though the words were biting.

Zuko glanced at Ty Lee. Could he really leave? Did he really trust Azula to the care of anyone else after what had happened last night? Did he really trust her to the care of _himself_ after what had happened last night?

But then this was _Ty Lee_.

And the truth was, he had been neglecting his duties ever since he had brought Azula home. And in the still-turbulent transition from Ozai's reign maybe that was an oversight she had every right to impress upon him. They were a kingdom with a lot of powerful enemies and they were still politically vulnerable.

He bit his lip, conflicted.

"You can go," Ty Lee told him earnestly. "She'll be fine with me."

Zuko relented, albeit unwillingly.

"Half an hour," he stipulated, "then I'll be back."

"Half an hour," she agreed, thinking that if Zuko could smooth over political tensions in that time then he was wasted on the moral plane

Azula didn't immediately respond to her brother's exit. For a while she simply sat with her eyes closed and her forehead pressed into the crook of Ty Lee's neck. The acrobat waited patiently, content to watch over her, considering her vigil penance for the circumstances which had collided and forced her to chose between her friends.

In the stillness she became aware of the faint pulsing of Azula's aura: once royal purple – the perfect balance of red, domineering heat and the blue singularity of her flame – it had faded to a tincture which she could not identify or name, because it was a shade both saturated in colour and completely devoid of it. It was the aura of someone who had lost their way. The aura of someone at odds with herself.

Slowly Ty Lee began to chase the flowing threads of her Chi, always ready to pull back if Azula found her investigation intrusive. There was something strange, a viscosity which stopped the energy moving as it should. Curiously Ty Lee perused it deeper, trying to work out what it was and where it emanated from. She found it. In the region of Azula's stomach a strange knot twisted, around which her Chi pressed but could not pass, could not flow, and therefore could not fulfil its purpose. She had never seen anything like it before. Casting a wary look at Azula, Ty Lee allowed her mind to brush against the obstruction but quickly recoiled with horror. What she touched was death and sickness and cold, made her own mind shiver.

What had happened to Azula?

After a long time, Azula's eyes blinked up at her with an expression of irritated confusion. And a bandaged hand rose slowly to wipe a smear of make-up off distastefully and reveal the soft skin beneath.

"Why?" she croaked with indignation.

Ty Lee considered it.

"I guess because I missed being part of something." She shrugged. "There was always the circus, or you. And then there just .. wasn't. In prison, Mai was so miserable and I was powerless to do anything to help her. She wouldn't talk, she wouldn't eat, she wouldn't even _look_ at me. I tried everything but I just couldn't _reach_ her. Not in the way _you_ could have. I stayed by her side night and day, tried to stop her from fading right before my eyes. But when she finally ordered me to go I had no choice." Ty Lee shook her head desolately. "That was how I met them. They were training in the court-yard, seamless, united: everything I missed and everything I wanted to be part of again. You were gone and Mai was gone and I had no-one else, so I asked if I could join them, and offered to teach them Chi blocking in return. They were resistant at first, how did they know I wasn't going to attack them again, I'd done it before. But I persevered and eventually they began to trust me." Ty Lee smiled. "Things got better after that. We even managed to coax Mai out of her shell."

She sighed, glancing at Azula with a self-conscious squirm.

"I know you think I'm foolish, or maybe even a hypocrite, but I _like_ being part of the Kyoshi Warriors. And we're not just based in the Earth-Kingdom you know, we serve the Fire-Nation too! … Azula?"

Ty Lee trailed off when she felt Azula's wrecked and broken body begin to tremble in her arms.

"Hey … " she began with concern.

"I'm sorry," Azula chocked around the void which had ripped open inside her and was now swallowing her in darkness. A distant part of her mind supplied that this was what remorse felt like. A sensation she had only ever read about and defamed as weakness.

Now she realized her mistake. Spirits make it stop, she begged, because nothing weak could ever hurt this much.

"I'm sorry … for … doing that to you. To … _both_ of you."

"It's okay," Ty Lee hurried to assuage. "Really."

Azula shook her head vehemently.

"How can it … _possibly_ … be okay?"

"It's okay because I forgive you. I _understand_." Ty Lee begged.

But the vehement denial did not cease

With the world slipping away from her, and her past treating her to a front-row seat to her own monstrous nature, Azula reverted to self-mutilating behaviour.

Her fingers rose and twisted into her hair. Winding, winding, winding, until the tension was ready to snap. Then she yanked, eliciting a satisfying yelp as clumps of black strands came away in her grip. Not content with a single strike, whose agony was localised only and begged for further indulgence, she reached up again. But Ty Lee's hands clamped firmly around her wrists, holding them down.

"Hey! Don't do that. Are you crazy?"

The complete benignity of the question, asked with no inflection or significance, disarmed Azula's violence. That was just like Ty Lee, to be so perceptive and ecumenical, and yet so oblivious and naïve.

"If your hair's bothering you I can fix it," the acrobat volunteered.

Then, releasing Azula's wrists, she swept the jagged bangs back off the fire-princes' forehead. With deft movements she weaved the strands into two symmetrical braids, drawing in only the hair which fell onto her face. The rest she left loose around Azula's shoulders.

Azula submitted to her ministrations, her limbs betraying the flaccidity of a newborn.

"There," Ty Lee announced proudly, securing the two braids together with a tie from her wrist.

She offered the fire-princes a stern look.

"You know, you do have a habit of making everything worse for yourself. You dig yourself in so deep that you leave no way to climb out again. That's a hard way to live."

She frowned.

"Azula?"

In the stillness, she felt Azula's breathing even out.

Shaking her head, she pulled the comforter up around them and leaned back into the headboard.

She held her in her arms like a child. Her leader. Her _friend_. The one person who had epitomised strength and stability in her life and now was cast adrift.

* * *

It was sometime later that Azula stirred to the sound of voices.

"_What do you think of her? Honestly."_

"_I think she's strong. And that you'll get through this."_

"_But get through it to what?" _Zuko's voice was strained,_ "To everything she was before? She can't _be_ that way, Ty Lee. I need to be able to trust that when I turn my back she's not going to shoot it full of lightening, or else what was the point?" _He groaned,_ "Everyone thinks I'm making a mistake, and what if they're right? Do I really have the right to put the whole kingdom in danger for the sake of my family? Urgh, I'm so _**confused**_!"_

The sound of light footsteps and satin brushing against silk.

"_Not everyone thinks you're making a mistake." _There was an earnest smile in the words._ "Give her a chance and she might end up surprising you. In the meantime _**show**_ her what's good in the world. Make her want to be part of it." _

A protracted pause.

"_Will you stay? Please? She responded to you. It's the calmest I've seen her since I brought her home."_

"_Zuko, I ..." _Ty Lee began uncertainly.

"_I'm sorry," _he begged heavily_,"that wasn't fair of me. You have your duties, just as I have mine."_

"_I can't stay now," _Ty Lee elucidated,_ "I have to keep things in balance and that means going with the Kyoshi Warriors to the West Coast. But when I get back I will. Don't give up hope, you're doing the right thing."_

"_Does that make up for doing the wrong thing in the first place?"_

Azula felt two sets of eyes rest upon her.

"_I think you already know the answer to that."_

* * *

Just like to establish that this is not Ty Zula, not that I have anything against that pairing (and I think that there is more than enough ambiguous moments in the show to at least suggest it), but I'm not going there. I just view whatever relationship Ty Lee has with anyone to be deeply tactile and physical, both because she's extremely expressive about what she feels and because she has no personal boundaries. I also think this is something Azula, especially in the vulnerable state she's in now, would really respond to, and we DO see her respond to Ty Lee more personally than anyone else (In The Beach in particular). She might be tough as nails, but everyone needs love and affection.

Thank you very much for reading! As always, feel free to leave comments, questions ideas. What would you like to see. Who would you like to be brought in. I have a plan which takes me to the sixth chapter then after that only vague ideas.


End file.
